Digging Deeper

When we started doing the kitchen we at first didn't think we would have to tear it apart but as the further we got into this restoration the more we saw that it would be a more complete job if we remove the drywall from the ceiling instead of just covering it over with new drywall. Then we decided that the walls also needed to come down to run new electrical and heat to the living space above that its only heat source was a hole in the ceiling of the kitchen. So basically the kitchen is gutted.

One very important thing we discovered by removing the ceiling was that the small 2 x 5 inch joists were not strong enough to hold up the floor above and there was a sag in the center of the ceiling of 1 2/3 inches. Which has begun the research into how to best shore up those joists. We are leaning toward placing a steel or lamenated beam perpendicular to the joists the length of the kitchen and then cover them and try to make them look like they belong.

Maybe we shouldn't have been suprised by this because we knew that the kitchen floor was sagging because of a broken, literaly twisted main beam and those same small 2 x 5 joists riddled with electrical, telephone and whatever that needed to go through them, but we felt those were the reason for the the floor sagging. The joists for the second floor have none of those problems and it is sagging. So before we can continue in the kitchen we have to correct our bad case of the sags.

Nancy