Gutting and Remodeling an old small house.

DustyJoe

Hi, My name is Dusty. I've been lurking around for a while now and decided to post up since I have something to share now. I'm an electrician by trade and recently switched careers and now work as an aircraft structures mechanic here in Oklahoma City.

My wife and I picked up this little investment property for a steal, basically nothing.. I'm not sure what year it was built, but it needs A TONE of help. It's going to be a few weeks before I have time to start working but it gives me a good amount of time to plan.

I'm going to attempt to save it, I have electrical experience and have done several remodels and additions. But nothing of this magnitude.

If I can save it, awesome. If not, then I still made a deal on the several acres of land.

The house basically needs entirely rebuilt, gutted, floors and exterior siding and walls..

The problems include: The floor floor joists are sagging, rotting and falling apart. The bottom plate on top of the foundation where the floor joists rest is rotten and needs replaced, the end plates for the floor joists needs replaced. The exterior wall studs where they attach to the floor needs replaced/repaired. And also the main support that runs the length of the house needs replaced..

Also, the crawl space needs finished properly with moisture barriers and proper ventilation.
and.. Everything interior wise, floors, drywall, cabinets, electrical and plumbing needs replaced.

I honestly only have a few thousand into the entire place, if I can get everything back on track under $25k, I will be doing very well as the value of the property is almost double that in liveable condition.

My first and biggest task after gutting is the floor, I'm going to have to create temporary piers in the crawl space close to the foundation after the floors are up.. I plan on creating "stilts" going from the piers (with bottle jacks on bottom) going up to the ceiling joists.. I'm basically going to raise the entire house a few inches to replace the rotten wood.

Here goes comes the pictures!! expect this thread to be full of them from start to finish =)

All comments/suggestions are welcomed! I will probably need help along the way..

DustyJoe

DustyJoe

Gary in WA

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

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

oh'mike

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

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eastside

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

DustyJoe

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?

Snav

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

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