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.
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