This week with glorious weather we made big progress, although much of the first part was invisible under the house. As Muggs had said in the original bid, there was an unknown amount of work to be done on the wall of the house, which we could not accurately bid on without knowing exactly what was behind the plywood that had been tacked onto the wall. This is a classic "can of worms" dilemma, as builders can't in good conscience secure a ledger to mush, but they also can't get into rebuilding the entire house. So we put in an off-the-bid day and a half, and strengthened the wall without going crazy.
The previous plywood was not structural and was not secured the way sheathing should be (there were maybe 6 nails per sheet, instead of one nail every 6-8 inches). So after this day of work the whole wall is tied together with pressure-treated plywood--the blocking we added to fill the voids, the inner joist, and the entire wall down to the sill.
These studs in the cripple wall (that runs between foundation and the floor of a house) were undersized and beginning to decay, so we sistered each of them up with a new pressure-treated 2 x 4. .
and then to satisfy our engineering consultant we T'd up another stud at a right angle behind the studs, to link up with the innermost joist that was sort of floating there.
I don't know if I can get these side by side for comparison but this shows the before and after from the outside:
The new plywood will serve to tie everything together, from subfloor to mud sill; here Muggs is applying construction adhesive to the house before we place the carefully-cut plywood and stitch it up with many more sheathing nails.
To protect this wall from moisture in the future, we slid adhesive membrane / flashing under the siding above, which was loads of fun in the warm weather, but it should keep any water drips away from any edges grain. We'll probably add some screened vents to help the dirt dry out--in the deluge things got pretty mucky (as I found out when I was nailing in the new structure from the inside!).
We're going with a 2 x 12 ledger, ripped to 2 x 10 in several places, which leaves lots of opportunity to tie in to the new studs we added. We'll sister in a small section over the vent pipe and the electrical conduit (there was no way to secure behind those anyway, as there was a huge clot of wiring routed there).
To the right of the electrical box, where we can access the inside, we'll through-bolt the ledger on, and to the left we'll use 8" hot-dipped-galvanized lag bolts, bigger than the ones that held the old ledger on, and running into the blocking we installed, as well as catching the lower studs. This picture shows the initial temporary placement of the ledger, with only a few Ledger-Lok screws, so we can pre-drill the holes for the big bolts. Then we'll pull the ledger boards off, secure the spacers, re-place the ledger, and finish bolting for good. The far-right end of the ledger, where the deck will meet the hillside path to the Big House, will get a mini-pier of its own, and will be doubled to receive joists from the patio side as well.
With the ledger as level as we can make it, we'll have the definite elevation for the beams, so we can finish-cut the posts, secure them plumb, add post caps, lay the beams on, make sure they're level, and we'll be ready to start placing joists. Simple!
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