It's quite cold and rainy today and I was thinking about(dreading actually) the upcoming winter. This led to thinking about the springtime and what my big plan is for fixing the roof issue.  It is very clear to me that this house had an addition built onto the back above the kitchen and living room.

      It was the flat roof on this addition that failed and caused all the water damage in the home. Since the entire roof sheathing & rafters have to come off of the addition,  I think I would rather just lose the addition altogether and build a sloped roof over the kitchen like I believe it had originally.

The addition only contains two very small rooms, a bedroom and a library.  I believe both rooms are only 12' X 10' .  They are just not worth keeping in my opinion.

  In this photo of the south side of the house you can clearly see where the addition is on the second floor:

I propose to remove it and build a roof over the kitchen like this:  (yeah, I know. I suck at photoshop)

After the staircase to the basement was built, we began to replace all the compromised floor joists in the dining room and hallway.  There were a total of ten beams that needed replacement.  One at a time we squeezed them in and attached them to the quadruple 2 X 10 beam with joist hangers.

Once all the joists are in, a new 3/4" plywood sub-floor will go down and then new hardwood.

Interesting side note, I found a couple polaroid photos in the house.  One is a snapshot of the back of the house in 1986.  Notice there are a few pieces of siding that appear to have been recently replaced but not yet painted?

Here it is in 2016, and it appears as though they never got around to painting that siding.  The chimney got replaced, and the mudroom got a roof extension, but those same five pieces of siding remain bare.

    See the sign on the door all the way over on the right side of this photo?
It reads: Do not enter - unsafe! 
  

    Let me tell you, if there was one sign in this house that I'm glad I heeded the warning, this was the one!  This was the door that led to the basement stairs...... wait let me rephrase that.  This was the door that once led to the basement stairs.  The basement stairs were a little bit rotted and kinda missing at the top.  Here is what awaited on the other side of that door:

     Rob built a new landing at the doorway, then hand cut some new stringers out of a pair of
treated 2 X 12's  and finally cut a few new treads.  I cant tell you what a pleasure it was to zip up and down them to get to the basement!

   There were two 4 X 8 floor joists in the basement that originally supported walls above them. One was under the staircase that led from the first floor to the second,  and the other supported the second interior dining room wall(the one without the double glass doors)

  Me and Rob jacked those walls up using the adjustable lally's and then snuck in some new double glued & screwed pressure treated 2 x 8's to hold up the walls.  Rob built a 2 X 6 wall under the new beam beneath the staircase as there was a great deal of weight above it. Seems the first floor staircase supports the other staircase & wall leading up to the 3rd floor.

Next post I'll show the new staircase to the basement.

With the new dining room wall holding up the 2nd floor, it seemed like a good time to remove the rotted 8" by 8" timber that was under the old dining room wall, as well as the rotted floor joists.

So, with a chainsaw and a dust mask, I had at it.  First section:

Middle section (Hey, what's holding up that wall?):

Last section out and in the back yard. The original floor joists were keyed into the notches in this beam. :

 .
Time to install some new beams & joists in the basement.  Stay tuned.

Back to the kitchen.  After the 2nd floor 4 X 8 support beam had been raised three inches, Rob suggested we hold it there by moving the dining room wall over 10" inches and build it right on top of the brand new beam(the one straddling the cinder block pillars). The new dining room wall will  now serve as a load bearing wall for the 2nd floor. The old wall can be torn down, and the double glass  doors transferred over to the new one.

We mirror imaged the old wall and came up with this :