Why Houses Have Gutters

Our house was built in 1969 and was one of the first on the block at the top of a ridge about 700 feet up.  Therefore the back of the house and deck looks out to a fantastic view.  I thought it would be a good place to start with our window and siding replacement project.

Here's the obligatory before pics.  The cedar shingle siding is very old and having no rain gutters on the house has essentially terminated their life as well as some other problems (you'll see soon).  Per the records when we bought the house the roof was replaced approximately 8 years ago so whatever roofer they hired didn't finish the job (or they thought there was enough overhang). 

The demo had started off with just removing the shingles to see what I was dealing with underneath.  Wouldn't you know it: no insulation in the exterior walls.  That's why the house gets very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer!  Also, the existing (original) plywood sheathing is only 5/16th of an inch thick and therefore would not perform very well in an earthquake.

I was hoping to not have to cut the deck back from the house.  However, the ledger board that connected the deck to the house was in fairly bad shape. The sub-floor sheathing (known as a cripple wall) was also not looking too good:

View from under the deck along the back wall

So unbolting the ledger and prying it off the house was actually pretty easy.  That's because there wasn't much left of the framing of the house that it had been connected to!

Where the ledger and plywood used to be.

This is why houses have gutters.  Maybe as important is keeping the decking off the house in the first place, even if it is flashed.  The ledger (and deck) can be attached to the house with engineered spacers that provide a gap so water can run by and not collect to do the damage you see here:

So the demo continued and the deck had to get cut back to provide us room to work.

Next stop... repairing the rotted framing.

How to Lift a House

The sill that ran at floor level (not the foundation sill) was two 2 x 4s stacked together.  Furthermore they weren't even nailed to the flooring!  Therefore my partner working with me on this suggested we place jacks under the back wall and lift the house a quarter-inch to be able to remove and repair the rotted framing.  Sounds like a good idea.  We ran temporary 4 x 6's the length of the back wall (~25-feet) under the flooring joists.  Next, three jacks from Home Depot (returned the next day) did the trick:

Temporary 4 x 6 beam runs the length of the back wall and takes the load off the rotted framing.

Once the flooring joists were off the sill then it was easy work to finish the demo of the rotted studs and sills.   The beautiful thing about being a homeowner is that nobody is there to tell you not to do things, such as: standing on a ladder with a beer wearing flip-flops while using a chainsaw, or lifting up your house on jacks.  Now I realize there are codes, inspectors, and insurance people out there who shouldn't read this less they want a heart-attack.  But remember, this is 'merica, and if the eyeball test passes then it should be good enough.

Bringing Down the House

Next up was repairing the framing that had been rotted away.  We started with cutting back a few inches of the rotted existing ends of the floor joists that were running perpendicular to the back wall.  Next, we cut 2 x 8's into approximate 3 feet lengths to serve as a new end to each floor joist.

View of the new ends to the 2 x 8 floor joists

  After, new horizontal blocking was added between each joist:

Blocking installed

Finally we could now add new support beams.  We decided to go with 4 x 4s instead of the 2 x 4s that are standard issue for this type framing for added strength.

Vertical 4 x 4 support beams installed

Three different levels of beams due to ground sloping

A good view of new vs old

Once the supporting 4 x 4s were in the moment of truth arrived.  We slowly released the jacks and let the flooring settle on its new bones.  The scary part of this is having to be underneath the house while the load is transferred from the jacks to the new construction.

Last but not least for the day was installation of the 1/2-in CDX plywood shear panels over the new construction framing.  In a few weeks I will remove the upper old sheathing and run new sheathing to meet with the bottom.

Changed the location of the subfloor access door.  It'll be more convenient here! 

Next step is going to be doing the same to the shorter wall next to it that contains a very old 6-foot aluminum sliding door.  I don't think the door is going to survive so we'll be replacing it with a new vinyl one.