Our First Major Repair Without Professional Assistance

....Or, "now it's Amy's fault if the house falls down."

One of our major concerns when we purchased the home was that there was notable rot and shifting of several of the posts holding up the house and joists holding up the floor. Some of this we fixed in May with the help of Dean, the carpentry superstar. But some of it we didn't get to. Even though they were really bad:

Seriously, that's supposed to be weight bearing and it's not.
Crap. Our house is still standing from force of habit.

But now, with the electricians finally gone we were able to get back under the house this weekend without tripping over hanging wires or worrying about bumping into an open circuit. So, with 4x6 lumber and our new chop saw at the ready, we got to work.

Hello, chop saw. That sorry piece of lumber is the 4x6 Dean replaced, now more of a 4x4 and perfect for practice cuts and shims.

Step one, place bottle jack next to rotted post and remove said post. For removing rotted lumber, I recommend the 24" demolition bar, a cat's paw, a 4 lbs. sledge hammer, and a carpentry hammer. Unfortunately, I don't have any pics of the actual demolition, but here is the first post we removed.

There really wasn't much left. No wonder the bedrooms leaned and the floors creaked. There was daylight under this post before I started lifting with the jack.

Foreground: 6 ton bottle jack sitting on 4, yes four, 7x7x4 CMUs. The dirt under the house is, well, fluffy.
Center: New 4x6 post and shiny new termite pan. Not yet plumb or braced, so don't panic.

Jacking up the house for this first replacement post was ridiculously scary. As I lifted the house, Ryan was inside with a level telling me to keep going. The roof banged, the wood creaked, and the jack pushed block after block into the soft ash our house is built on. As the jack ran out we had to prop up the rotten post with shims, let down the jack, put in a new CMU block, and re-lift the house. We did that three times before we got the floor level.

Once we had the post in, we had to get the braces in. The braces along the exterior wall were easy enough, Ryan just cut some 2x4 to match the ones we removed. The interior brace was a little trickier, though. The interior braces are anchored on a piece of 2x4 lodged between the floor joists. The problem with this was that the two joists by this post were significantly termite damaged. Dean had shored them up by "sistering" them damaged joists with a new, treated board. This meant that I couldn't nail the new brace in from the outside and I couldn't just line the new one up where the old one was. I had to wedge the new brace up between the damaged joists until I found sound wood and then I had to toe-nail it in. It was neat work, but I couldn't get a clear photo.

But that was only one of the two posts we fixed. This is the other one:

Of the five posts holding up the back of my house, three looked like this. It was...worrisome. And don't go thinking that little tab in the middle is holding anything up, it flaked away as soon as we started demolition. That's right, everybody, the exterior corner of my kitchen was being supported by the memory of a 4x6. No wonder the fridge leans.

You might have also noticed that the termite pan in the last photo is embedded in the driveway. I fixed that with a masonry chisel and my trusty sledge hammer. Once we had the new posts treated with Hi-Bor and installed, they looked like this:

The very last nails in the first new post. Yeah, I'm a rock star. I installed that post. Ryan cut the lumber, and did a great job, it wouldn't look that good without his excellent chop saw skills.

New post, new block, new termite pan. Ryan did most of the work on this one, my arms were getting tired after chipping away all that asphalt by hand.

And I looked like this:

Dirty sexy. The shirt is also covered in dirt, but it's harder to see. Dirt-colored shirts rule.

As of this posting, we still have one jack under the house. The last post has moved almost entirely off it's pier and we can't put it back because there is a join in the beam. So this weekend we'll be pouring concrete! Good times.