Old House Stories: Small Town Queen Anne — Tennessee River Country — Old Photo Album

A House in a Small Town: Chapter Three

I had stripped the ceiling off the downstairs rooms to expose the upstairs joists. They were oak two by eight that had been put up green (not dried) when the house was new. The floors had sagged quite a bit and were real bouncy, like a hardwood trampoline. (exaggerating a little there, but not much) Well, I didn't want to take them out and replace them because the upstairs floorboards were fine and I didn't want to do more than I had to do. So I figured out a way to use a few 12 inch joists to reinforce them. I figured I would sister them to the old joists but just on every other one. I fastened a 2 by 4 to the wall on either side a couple inches lower than I really wanted them. I did that because I intended to slide the new joist up as high as we could go with it (without pushing the floor-board loose) and then set the new/used joists' end on them. After we set them up we bolted them in the middles to the old joists so they would be held fast while lifting the ends up, leveling the floors—not completely level but more level than before. I don't even remember how we lifted up the ends, probably by pounding in wedges between the new joist and the 2 by 8 that it was resting on.

Then after getting the "sisters" up there we had to fill in the four-foot spaces between them. We did that by cutting blocks of 2 by 4 and bridging them. The bridges served two purposes then—supporting the "every other" floor joist above, and supporting the sheetrock that I would be hanging on the ceiling below. I don't have very many pictures of this whole process because I couldn't really afford very much film and processing. If I were doing it now I would have an inexpensive digital camera, at least, to document everything with. No film cost or processing cost—now that's progress. Now I rarely print them out; I just shoot the pictures into my computer with a USB cable, punch them up a bit with Irfanview or the GIMP, resize and put them in the web site. A lot more convenient. Nevertheless I can remember my excitement when I used to go pick up my pictures at the drugstore (usually with a sale coupon) and break into that envelope to see how they turned out. I guess those days are gone forever.