There were some Internet connection problems up here (Joe's in transition, and the U-Verse is on his connection), so pardon the lapse in this blog! I'm writing this on Sunday evening, after having headed down for the Friday Night fun of attending the Oakland Symphony with Amelie's parents.
We had a pleasant shorter day on Friday, and finished off the last bits. We popped the last bits of ledger and joists that we had been too tired to remove the previous day. There's also a fair amount of debris / trash to move to the dump pile before we can lay out pier locations.
Knowing that the hillside was going to be treacherous to walk on, we terraced a little to create some sort-of steps so we have better footing close to the house in the next stages. This would also mean that we'd be less likely to damage exposed drain pipes during construction.
Here's the front view. Our plan is to replace the thin plywood siding on the right with pressure-treated structural plywood once we have reinforced the wall and ledger, which will mean maximum strength with not a lot of cost. The water supply pipe is to the right, and there was a very strange configuration of copper piping connecting it to the house and the hose bibb by the shower, so I am taking an hour to re-route this important connection lower down in a less fragile and exposed way.
The center of the house presents some problems but we're pretty confident they are minor: notice the sag in the threshold below the doors. The clearances are still fine, meaning that things have not parallelogramed too badly.
Here's a close-up. We're going to peel a little of the facing between the doors and assess the state of the center post--it may be easy to jack it up 3/8 of an inch and then reinforce the center line. I did a walkaround today (Sunday) with our structural engineer friend Leonard, and he said this would be a very good idea, but that our plans for securing the ledger would be very acceptable, especially if we could use the plywood to tie sills and structure together.
There are a couple of areas like this one that we plan to remedy quickly without letting project-scope-creep get out of control. It's not a good idea to just cover these up and pretend the problem isn't there, but you also have to know when to stop.
One of the things I confirmed in my inspection today was that the stubs we thought were floor joist ends are actually just stubs--the floor joists run east-west, which is actually good news in terms of loads, according to Leonard. My hypothesis is that when Bud originally built the house, he may have attached the deck joists this way, lapping them on the sill and securing them to the last house floor joist. Only in a later version of the deck did the ledger get attached slightly lower down. Maybe there are old family photos that show this (I recall viewing an album showing very young Doffy and Bud working on the house in the oaks and bays).
Tom has a bunch of horticultural work stacked up in the East Bay this week, but has moved his Knaack boxes to the patio and will be ready to roll soon. I plan to devote a couple of days this coming week is to preparing the layout and carefully removing some of the siding so we know exactly what we are dealing with--I'll also take a Shop-Vac to the spiderweb colonies, and set us up so we can secure the ledger and flashing first thing next week. This'll also mean punching in some pressure-treated wood behind the scenes, as Leonard recommended. I'm also hoping to spend some hours on the living-room rehab up at the Big House, which can be done even if it rains.
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