Raising the roof-Bathroom house rebuild

[Tom King]

On the 12' x 14'  brick bathroom house.  

Pictures are my wedge cutting jig.  I've used this a number of times for making opposing wedges.  Once to raise sagging rafters, and once to raise a house.  The wedges are 22" long.

Don't try this at home.  I usually have at least one other helper that catches the outfeed.  I've been working by myself through the pandemic.

I push it through a bit past halfway, back off, and let it sit there while I walk around to the outfeed side to finish pulling it through.  My fingers never get anywhere near the blade.  

They worked like a charm, and the little roof went right up.  The plywood sheathing is nailed to the top plate, but a long sawzall blade walked right down the cut.  One jack easily lifted one whole side, but I'll use three on a side to not distort it.

Sometimes a bent on purpose Sawzall blade is the right one to get into a plane that a corner won't let you get the end of the saw up into.

 

[Tom King]

I ended up getting the whole thing raised up, sitting on one flat 2x4.   It went up so easily that I only used one jack, and one 2x4.  The plan is to raise it 4-1/2", which will give

6' 9-1/2" headroom walking under the overhang fascia.  Anyone taller than that is used to ducking.

[Coop]

It’s amazing what one fellow can do by himself when you have to. Good on ya! 

[Coop]

So you will be adding two each, 2x4’s between the two top plates, all the way around? 

[legenddc]

Some toggle clamps might help you not have to walk around the saw and still keep your fingers away. Looks like a nice blade cover/dust collector.

[Tom King]

Yes, but that would have taken longer than doing it this way for 8 wedges, especially since I didn't have any such clamps laying around.  With a helper, it doesn't matter.  My fingers never got anywhere close to the blade.   I haven't needed any 2' long wedges for several years.  I really didn't need them that long this time, but at that length, it's easy to keep fingers well away from the saw blade.  I just needed to separate the top plates enough to get a sawzall blade between them to cut the nails.  They were made from a scrap of old oak 1x board.

 That's an Exactor overarm dust hood.  When I bought it, that was the only one that used a 4" hose.  It works fine.  I did need to close up some of the open spaces with blue tape.

[Tom King]

On 3/5/2022 at 9:48 PM, Coop said:

So you will be adding two each, 2x4’s between the two top plates, all the way around? 

That was the plan to start with, but it went up so easily I decided to use three 2x4's when I get back to that job, which will raise it 4-1/2".

[Tom King]

I worked on this yesterday, but the pictures wouldn't go to email before this morning.

I have a Large quantity of lumber left over from building projects, and used for different scaffolding setups.  There is a big pile of fairly short pieces of 2x4's, so I used pieces out of that pile for the spacers.  That left some empty spaces, but I'll just spray some foam in those spots.

In one of the buildings that was here when we first bought this place is an organizing cubby unit with all sorts of old bolts in it.  I don't know how old it is, or where it first came from, but all the bolt heads and nuts are square.  I have rarely been able to find any bolts the right length for any that I have ever needed, so I've tried to give it away a couple of times, to anyone who would move it.  No takers, so it's still here.  It paid off this time.  I needed some 8-1/2" long bolts, and there was a cubby full of them.

Jacking the roof up leaves a space on top of the bricks, but I'll just run some of my old scaffolding boards down to look decent to cover the space.

So far, I have spent zero dollars on this job.

It doesn't seem like 4-1/2" would be enough to make a difference in the way the little building looks, but it really does have more pleasant proportions.  Having the eaves above the top of the doors makes some difference as well.  

The ceiling height inside is now still only 8'1".  Really strange that they built it so short to start with.  All the doors are 2' doors.  I'm going to leave them that size on the storage room end, but change two bathroom entrance doors to 42".  Bigger than 2' would be better for the utility room, but I don't want to go to the trouble of cutting more than two brick openings.

 

[wtnhighlander]

That must have been built well before the Americans with Disabilities Act, to have such narrow doors. 

[Tom King]

I think probably 1963, or a little before.  The lake was flooded October 1963.  They may have planned a little in advance, but no one really has any idea.  It was a picnic and swimming place the first few years the lake was here, but no one remembers how long it was open for that.  I was surprised not to find termite damage, but they probably treated it with Chlordane back then, which was effective although not good for the environment.  The bottom wall plates are treated wood, just bolted down to the concrete slab.

I'm going to have to break up part of the slab to reroute plumbing for the new plan.  Hopefully, I'm right in expecting it not to be too thick.

[Mark J]

5 hours ago, Tom King said:

Really strange that they built it so short to start with. 

Well it was a brick $#!+ house, so maybe they figured everyone would be sittin' down. 

[Tom King]

I'm going to be able to reuse the plumbing drain lines that are already there.  I hit the floor twice with a 20 lb. sledgehammer, and it barely chipped the surface.  I stood there looking at it for about a minute, and came up with a whole new plan.  It will work fine, and while it's not exactly the way Pam wanted it, she didn't want to break the 58 year old concrete up either.

I'm going to swing the doors to the outside, and lay the tile to slope towards the door.  I think I'll tile everything, including the ceiling.  That way they can be cleaned out with a water hose, and the doors left open to dry.  We'll put a ceiling fan in each one to dry them out.  

[Coop]

Will you be doing the outside brick work yourself? 

[Tom King]

Is that a trick question?

edited to add:  Too close to the ground for me.

 

[Tom King]

Actually, it's not worth the trouble to bother with that brickwork.  I have no idea where to find any matching brick anyway.  I'm just going to cover that gap up with wood.

[Tom King]

I went down there today to frame the walls up.  I have enough straight 2x4's to frame the inside walls up, but laying out the plates, I was having a hard time getting things to work out.  As I checked more, the walls are not straight, plumb, nor square.  I'm going to have to sister almost every stud.  In the 9' lengths of the two bathrooms, I could make one have parallel walls, but the other one would have been out 2-3/4" in that 9'.  That would have been impossible, not to mention aggravating,  to do pretty tilework in.

With lumber prices what they are, not even talking about the poor quality, I picked through my decades old supply of crooked studs, and spent the afternoon flattening one side, and straightening one edge of pieces to do the sistering with.  I was glad I had saved that otherwise junk lumber, but it's going to make insulating the walls a pain.  I may use spray foam.

[Tom King]

After building the sink base in the first bathroom, I made all the parts for a duplicate in the second bathroom to match. 

I glued down the sole plates, and in the process found a spot with a strange hollow sound under it.  I decided to investigate the strange sounding spot, and found a floor drain under a thin coating of concrete over duct tape????  I'm not sure what the original intention was, but it didn't have a trap under it.  It has a hinged top???

Pam had wanted a shower in one of the bathrooms, but after we found that the old concrete floor was so hard, we decided to stick with the in place cast iron drain lines, and design around them.  At first, the new plan didn't allow for a shower.  I found this non-trapped floor drain has a 2" line that drops into a 4" line at an old toilet location that we are not using.

I won't end up using most of the pieces I ran for the second sink base.  Once again, we came up with a whole new plan, and now will have a 3' x 4' shower in this bathroom.  It will have a smaller sink counter, but I had only ordered one sink to start with anyway, so I ordered a smaller one for the newly designed 37" wide sink counter in this bathroom.

I'll cut a big square hole around this drain, cut the cast iron pipe, and get a trap in for the shower.  It's plenty close enough to the nearest vent stack.

I'll let the construction adhesive set up, and knock these sole plates loose then.  It will make less mess than taking them up with the adhesive still soft.

My homemade 3' x 5' framing square helps a lot in laying out bathrooms.

 

[Tom King]

I finally got back to this job a little over a year later.  I was waiting for some help, and my BIL and SIL came back to stay for a little while.  We used BIL's hybrid F150 for a power source for the grinders.

I'm not suggesting to try this at home, but I needed to get it done.

I bought a cheap 4-1/2" grinder with a long handle to make the first cut with.  We did a door on each side of the building for each bathroom.  The 4-1/2 only lasted for the first cut.  The tape on it is to hold the water supply tube.

I was a bit worried about the 9" grinder, but it wasn't hard to handle at all, and the Makita blade cut the hard bricks like Butta'.  It was not a problem using it for the first cut on the second opening.  I used the water tube and hose adapter that came with the big masonry saw, but that saw was too much of a beast to use over my head and holding out in front of me.  Duct tape and a stiff wire shot the water right where I needed it.

I did get wrapped up, but wore waterproof boots, and worn out clothes to throw away.  A full face shield was also necessary.

The 9" grinder cut a little over 3" deep, so there was less than 1/2" of bricks left, and that little bit broke right off.

I have everything cleaned up now, and ready to frame out the doors.  Making these cuts was holding up the rest of the job, but I wanted someone to hold the cord plugs to separate them if I started getting shocked.  I didn't, but still wanted to account for the possibility.

Almost all the bricks were saved, so I have some for a few places I need them.

 

[Tom King]

All around the outside of the building, termites had eaten about 2/3's of the inside of the sole plate where it was sitting on the concrete.  Earlier in this thread, I said they were treated, but evidently not.  They must have sprayed them on top when they built the building, because the termites didn't eat the whole 2x4's, and left the whole top and outside, barely enough to continue to support the wall.  

I dug out all the rotten remnants that the termites left, blew it out, vacuumed it out, treated it with Chlordane, and let it dry.  Thinset cement was packed under there, and boards were screwed to the studs to act as forms.

This was the next step before I can "pour" the new floor, and it was held up by needing to enlarge the door opening first.  I at least feel like I'm making progress on this again.

 

[Tom King]

In preparation for pouring the new floor base to lay tile on, I've decided to go with 3/16" per foot of slope.  For that low of a slope, it has to be perfectly flat for water to run off, and no low spots in the tile.  In order to finish flat, it's easier to start flat.

Using an 8' aluminum concrete screed as a straight edge to read the slope I want off of, with an accurate little level that reads slope, I laid some thinset up to the right height, and level, across the door opening.  I'll set something else later around the walls to screed off of, and use this concrete thinset base as the outer gauge for the screed.

All the sole plates had to be doubled up to give support to the strips of polystyrene foam I'll be using for the screed guide along the walls.  Will show that another day.  Rained out for today.  The "forms" can come off another day after the thinset is mostly set up.

Nothing about the old floor is level, and it has a bunch of humps, so I had to raise everything high enough to clear the humps.  This will put the threshold into the bathroom above an inch, so I've decided to lay tile on the concrete surround around the building to get rid of that step, and slope it to all shed water too.  It will end up being better to raise it all a little because right now there is no slope to the ground away from the house.

[Tom King]

Knocked the forms off the screed support in the doorway this morning.  When I'm pouring the new floor surface and get close to the door, I'll knock this up so it's all in one piece with no cold joint.