Monday, May 2, 2011

A small hole in the floor.

I do not recall ever watching the entirety of "the money pit" (with Tom Hanks), but I vaguely remember a couple of scenes wherein Tom is sinking into the floor and another having a hole in the floor the size of an elephant from the tub falling through.

While this may bring a few laughs to others it mostly brings a few sobering tears to my eyes. I purchased this beast about 2 years ago, hoping to stabilize the foundation, replace windows and make a few functional improvements and repairs to kitchens and bathrooms. To date I have spent something in the area of 1800-2000 man hours replacing the foundation, several load bearing walls, the roof, the windows, and now continuing on with the small hole in the floor.

As I have mentioned before after gutting the interior it became clear that there was a house fire, which I date sometime in the 30-40's, which damaged some of the floor joists. In conjunction with needing to file a major overhaul permit I am compelled to bring the entirety of the structure up to current day code, which means replacing sections of the sub-floor and joists.

I have been taking my time with the sub-floor replacement to ensure that I get it reasonably close to a planar surface, but one section of the living room area requires complete replacement. So I have removed both the sub-floor and joists in this section even though the picture might cause a weaker man mental neurosis. I may have needed to wipe my eyes a few times, but I swear that was because of the dust.