Taking Out the Dip

Taking Out the Dip

I knew something was on Tom Silva's mind. We were about a month into the project and he wasquiet. Perhaps even moody.

"What's up Tom?"

"That dip in the floor is bugging me."

I couldn't get much more out of him that day, but I knew he had an itch to scratch. About a weeklater I visited the site and saw how Tom scratches this kind of itch.

He and the crew decided to jack up the middle of the house to get rid of the dip. They used eightjacks to lift the central beam and some attached joists. The jacks had a combined lifting capacity of200 tons. Tom says the big one in the middle used to belong to his father. They gradually raised themiddle of the house over the course of a long weekend. They completed the job by replacing thecentral beam, reconstructing the supporting structure, and sistering several joists.

One of the complications from this kind of project is a bunch of cracked plaster, like this:

But since we were making major repairs to the walls anyway, we figured this was a small price topay for a dip-free floor.

Posted by Malcolm Faulds | Categories: Arlington Italianate 2013-2014 | Permalink | Comments(2)

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