Joist For Fun

It seems this can result with unnoticed water penetration. The leaks are long gone, but nobody fixed the results.

Today I worked on getting prepared for some brick work that needs to be done. This is in the East room that is currently torn apart. Obviously it has no floor. Right now the ceiling has been removed as well. While removing the wainscoting, this corner lost some bricks. This morning I removed the fallen bricks, then scraped mortar and vacuumed. 


After that, I could get a good look at the joists in that corner. The last three joists were considerably lower in that corner. I thought I would just sister them and build up the subfloor to flat above. However, after seeing what's in the picture below, I decided to jack them up and make sure they're sitting on a solid foundation. 

Results of former half-hearted repairs.

It might be hard to see in the picture above, but the joist on the left is sitting on two semi-rotten 2x4 boards stacked on top of each other. The middle joist is partially rotted on the very end so that it only has less than an inch on the foundation. The joist on the right was rotted back further so that it almost seemed like it was barely on the joist. 

Now that the joists are raised and sistered, these water pipes will make removing the rotten 2x4 boards quite fun. The pipes are likely to be removed soon for a re-plumbing project. 

Unfortunately, this last joist also has the house entry for the two gas lines drilled through the middle and, therefore, cannot be raised. Considering this, I decided to use raise the left two joists to rebuild the foundation underneath. Another trip to Home Depot and I came home with two new jack posts and three four-foot joist pieces to sister to the ends to make sure they don't slip off. After some post wrestling and cursing in the cellar, during which I had a scare when the right-most joist actually slipped off the foundation, I had two of three joists jacked to level. Next, I sistered the three of them and replaced the subfloor (still temporary). 

Jacked and sistered

I'm hoping that tomorrow I can tuck point the now-exposed inner brick. While that's curing, I'll probably research what I need to do to secure and level underneath the raised joists. Does anyone have any suggestions? My thoughts are that someone replaced brick with a stack of 2x4 boards a while ago. I'll probably replace this section of it with brick unless a stack of boards is common for the top of a foundation in older homes. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, I'll probably just have an uneasy feeling about using wood. 


Also in the meantime, I'll continue to research brick laying, so I can be more prepared to replace the bricks that fell out. I don't believe that brick layers like to leave this many bricks hanging in an existing wall, but that's pretty much how they fell out. I hope I can replace them sooner rather than later.

To-do:

1. Tuck-point back side of exterior brick
2. Research and rebuild top of foundation under temporarily jacked joists.
3. Research and replace brick that has fallen out of interior wall