So this involves the rent house from hell that has been empty for over 3 months now trying to get it rented or sold. This house was built in 2002 but the builder was foreclosed on. House sat without any windows or doors for probably a year or 2 until the bank came in and finished it, and it was then sold to us as new contruction, although we were unaware of all this at the time of purchase. About 5 years ago the dog was walking out the front door and his leg literally broke thru a ceramic tile at the front door. I then discovered lots of wood rot in this area by the front door and also termites. We had the termites taken care of and there are none now but a lot of the wood rot was not termites but rather wood rot from it being wet from when no doors or windows were on the house. There was part of the plywood rotted, and the header plate or whatever you call it was rotted out as well directly under the front door. This plate runs parallel to the floor joists. I had a buddy of mine come in and cut out a section of the flooring after pulling up the ceramic tile in the entry, cut out that section of the header board and installed a new piece, then replaced the plywood and we put new tile in the entry area. There is currently some wood rot of various degrees all along the front of the house in this header plate mainly under where the windows are but this was the worse area at the time. So after the renters moved out I discovered the corner of the floor in the kitchen dining area is sagging starting in corner next to where the window is, and extends along the wall running a 90 degree angle from the front of the house. So I get under and discover a significant amount of wood rot in that corner. Basically the header plate is completely rotted out. The difference this time is the floor joist mount to this plate so they are basically not supported and the floor is sagging. As a temp fix I jacked up the floor and added supports just back from the stem wall to take the pressure off of the failing header plate. We have had a few showings of the house for both renters or potential buyers and nobody has said anything about the floor but we did have a couple look at it yesterday and mentioned the floor as it still has a little bit of sag in that corner, but mainly is noticable because a small piece of tile in the corner is broke off and dropped down a bit because that small area has no support as the plywood under the tile is rotted as well. We have disclosed to realtors who are showing the house to their clients of this issue and they can put in any offer for it to be repaired and we would repair it at closing, which is common. I am now thinking I need to just go ahead and repair it. We got a quote a while back but quite frankly with this house sitting empty funds are not available to pay a contractor. Otherwise I probably would.

So this can't be rocket science and I don't think its anymore complicated than many of the repairs I have done on vehicles, it is just I work on cars and have not gotten into major wood work before. So I am thinking what I need to do is pull the tile up, cut out a section of the flooring and can work from inside the house instead of crawling back and forth under the house. I would need to sawsall off the ends of the floor joists, then start removing that header plate, cut to fit a new section and jam it into place, then sister in new floor joist sections to connect back to the header plate. One of the big problems though is the ceramic tile. While it appears it would be a common color that could be matched, we found we could not when we did the entry hall. This tile is in this kitchen eating area, the kitchen, and the adjoining formal dining room. So we would either have to do something with a different color of tile that appears to sort of separate off this area from the kitchen and formal dining, or ALL the tile will have to be replaced, and it is a LOT of tile. I had also thought about replacing the tile in this area with that laminate hardwood floor stuff and making the kitchen dining area this, but I am not sure if that would look stupid or not. We also have this same tile in the bathrooms and the laundry room and have several tiles in other areas of the house that are cracked. I am not really sure it was a good idea to install ceramic tile over crawl space, they just installed it directly onto the subfloor. I am thinking you are supposed to use some sort of backer board between the tile and plywood subfloor but not sure.


Anyway, long post, anybody BTDT? Anybody want to come down and help me with this project in exchange for parts, cars, whatever? I am sending some photos I took from under the house in a minute.


_______________________________________
http://www.okiebenz.com

To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/

To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to:
http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com

Reply via email to