# Gutting and Remodeling an old small house.



## DustyJoe (Sep 5, 2011)




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## DustyJoe (Sep 5, 2011)




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## Gary in WA (Mar 11, 2009)

Welcome to the forum! Looks like you have some work ahead of you......

Moved you to "Project showcase", not to tie up another forum.

Gary


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## Thadius856 (Jun 2, 2011)

Good luck! I hope you don't find even more than you expected.


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## oh'mike (Sep 18, 2009)

Consider renting proper jacks--Bottle jacks are not safe for house lifting----They bleed out and drop.


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## eastside (Aug 19, 2010)

Nice project. I am doing the same project going on 3 years (doing this in my spare time), your house looks a bit smaller than mine which is 1100 sq ft. I had small trees growing through the roof in some spots. Off hand, I'm sure 25k will take care of the costs. 

I had two screw type house jacks, then used bottle jacks for lifting. You'll need plenty of blocks of wood, some 3/8 thick metal to use for the jacks to push against.

Frankly I think I would start work on the load bearing outiside walls first. Good luck, don't get discouraged. Contractors told me to bulldoze the place. The contractor I have the most repsect for, I called back to have him hook up the sewer and water. I'm sure he wasn't surprised but just not something he would do. Ya gotta love the project.

Regards

Mike


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## DustyJoe (Sep 5, 2011)

I'm starting to gather materials and would like some advice.

I basically need to lift the entire house off the foundation a few inches to replace all the joists, sill plastes and main girder. I'm considering using maybe 12 beams going from the ground up to the rafters with braces on them using floor jacks instead of bottle.. This should get me the few inches I need I hope..

Anyone have any other ideas?


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## Snav (Aug 20, 2009)

Well - we're living in our home which has the same exact issues throughout - so I had to come up with a more practical solution since jacking the entire house up off teh frame is out of the question.

And this actually was approved and given a pass via inspection . . . 

Our joists sit on a sill - the joists are undersized so they're sagging and cracked - the sill is also undersized and sagging and cracked. Since we can't remove the original woodwork I had to build a dummy-frame in between it that would support new joists and then sister the new straight joists to the old, warped joists.

The new joists are what support the flooring - these were jacked, brought to level, and then attached to the sagging joist next to it - this gave strength, stability but we did not bother jacking flush the old joists. Doing this would just bring the new beams down when the support was taken away and defeat the purpose.

The dummy frame that supports the new beams sits between each joist - filling in the sill area - and is made from 4 x 6's that are cut to fit (which varied from 12" - 18") - hammered into position - then lag bolted to the original sill. The new joist is then attached to this with brackets.

It was my solution to this problem of 'failed joists in a crawlspace with no access' - and my inspector loved my ingenuity.


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## new2thecrew (Jan 16, 2012)

Hey Dusty just signed up today and typed in Oklahoma. Cool to see you on here bro. Its ridin_low07 from okcminis


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