Winter 2009-2010
Transcribed and Edited by Christine Barrera
I began by preparing the area that needed work. I laid construction paper on floor in the Special Exhibit room and the Mural room, and rolled the carpet up, and put plastic cording in the two rooms.
First, I installed a temporary post to help take weight off of the first area, the special exhibit room, to be repaired. Then I took an elevation reading of both the mural room and special exhibit room with laser transit. In other words, I took measurements to find out where dips and high spots were on the floor.
Next I removed two interior walls of the closet in the Special Exhibit room, including shelves, and hung a plastic vapor barrier. I removed the walls to expose the back side of damaged plaster, and the other wall of closet was removed to allow easier access to the work area below the old chimney/ fire place.
Once inside of the old chimney/ fireplace area, one layer of cement blocks were removed off the fire place base, which is the part under the chimney, in the basement, again to allow access for blocking/jacking equipment etc. Went I went into the basement, the area under the floor that was to be worked on had to first be hand-excavated. Once cleared of sand and dirt, blocking jacks and two oversized push plates were installed to take the weight off of the first rotted carrying beam that would be replaced. Then I hand-excavated further, traveling in lines with same area and installed more jacks.
I worked on two carrying beams in the house. The Main carrying beam runs right below the center wall in the house, which divides the special exhibit room, mural room and Bridgton Room. This beam runs from the inside edge of the Bridgton room doorway, to just before the special exhibit/mural room doorway. The other carrying beam runs perpendicular, across the center of the room. Next, a carrying beam was removed, Two-by-tens, laminated with pressure treated ply wood, were glued and screwed together to form a new a carrying beam, larger and stronger than original. At this point, jacks were installed under the new beam to take weight off first jacks, allowing room to install cement pads.
Once cement pads were installed, two jacks were placed on the outside edges of the pads. This allowed the weight on the jacks from the new carrying beams to be transferred to jacks on cement pads. This was in order to pre-weight the cement pads so when the final support post was installed the building didn’t sink back down. This previous procedure was done because a compacter would be impossible to be brought in due to lack of space. If the building sank back down, I would have had to lift it back up, and made the building expand and compress like an accordion. Good for accordions but bad for old buildings with plaster and lathes.
At this point, I left all jacks in place to make final adjustments, then I got the plaster repair man, Peter Lorde, to come in and start his part of the restoration. I went to the basement to man the jacks and asked Peter to watch plaster while I make final adjustments.
Peter was able to look through lathes on the backside of the wall and see the keys of plaster. He watched for when the keys lined up back to original lathe location, and when they did, I was able to install final post to pad. This procedure to post the building to pads was repeated many times, and I will only refer to it as ‘posting or reposting building’ rather than to explain it in detail over and over again, which would be less interesting than watching paint dry.
While I was doing the first lift in leveling the carrying beam, I was also lifting the center of the building (fireplace/chimney area). I then posted all four corners of the fireplace area to existing fireplace base. I also installed new a cement pad in area under the door between the Special Exhibit room and the Mural room.
While posting fireplace area I could see damage and rot and inadequate floor support in front of fireplace in the Mural room. I also noticed some knocked out and weakened floor joists from my view at the door {posted} area (looking up from the cellar at the doorway to the fireplace area). I brought this to the attention of the curator Julie Lindbergh, and she asked if I could attend to it also, and she also wanted the floor in front of the stairwell secured, as it seemed very bouncy and weak. It also had a 1 ½ - 2” gap between the wall and floor, meaning that it wasn’t actually supporting the floor.
My next task was to remove 2x4 floor joists under floor in front of fireplace, and to remove rotted or damaged floor boards under first layer of the floor. New advantech flooring was installed under the floor, and new 2x10 floor joists were also installed, but I used old square nails, recovered from stock material in the L upstairs. These nails were used on floorboards to re-secure the old floor to the advantech and the new floor joist.
I then excavated earth in the basement stair area and continued towards center of room. Then I was able to lift the door entrance area, lift the wall, and then jack the wall sideways to make the wall stand up straight and re-secure the wall. Before moving it over, I removed the top board and trim over the door, and I also separated the door jam (the door frame) and trim on left side. I cut a wedge-shaped piece of wood to fill in the gap after the wall was moved back.
Then I installed new support beams under the basement door entrance, running past the disconnected floor joist, which allowed for new support for the dysfunctional floor joist. I ran a second support under it, running parallel to cellar entrance wall, shimming three more floor joists and posting to new pads multiple times.
The next repair was to weaken floor joists (from the doorway-wall of the special exhibit room across to the wall of the mural room). Of course the first thing I had to do was hand excavate that area, on my belly. After excavating in this area, I moved the digging parallel to the floor joist and toward main carrying beam, which runs across the middle of the Special Exhibit room, perpendicular to longer walls. To show the extent of weakened floor joist, I reached up and pulled down as you can see in the pictures [insert picture with hand showing weakened floor joists]. There was only two and a half inches of wood left, but it had a one and a half inch cut, leaving only one inch of support.
I then installed new floor joists beside the old notched and weakened floor joist that ran the whole length of the floor joist, and connected them to the outer sill (towards the front of the house in the Special Exhibit room) in the inner carrying beam.
