Kitchen Nightmares: Somerville Edition

So I had a request for more info on the big support beam we had installed yesterday.  I’ll try to describe the issue and show some more detailed pictures.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, our upstairs bathroom sits on top of the kitchen, but it only covers about half of the room.  The other half is where we have a higher ceiling in the back of the kitchen.  At the back of of the bathroom, a load-bearing wall across what is now the kitchen must have been removed at some point.  No replacement support for the upper floor was added.

Now, I don’t believe that the upper floor was completely unsupported because we never had any settling or or instability up there.  I think it just wasn’t supported in a way that met modern building codes.  It looked like the framing of the upper floor may have been attached to the side of some large support columns on one side, but there was nothing supporting it directly from underneath.  The bottom of the upper floor looked like this:

Kitchen ceiling

Unfortunately I don’t seem to have any pictures of the sides of the upper floor, where it meets the two kitchen walls.  Just the photo above, which shows what the main part of the ceiling looked like before the changes.  The old strapping, about 3 inches’ worth, was removed, lessening the amount that we would have to lower the ceiling to accommodate the beam.

Yesterday, the new support was installed across the kitchen.  It’s the large, medium-colored horizontal beam in this photo:

New support beam

It’s now sitting underneath the back of the upstairs bathroom.  The old wood above the beam in the photo is the outside of the bathroom.  On what would be the left side of the photo above, it’s supported by a large column that was already part of the structure.  A notch was cut out of the column and the beam was set into it, like so:

Left-side support for new beam

The existing column is the ancient-looking wooden piece in the lower-right.  A new 2×4 was also placed to the left, presumably to add extra bracing to keep the beam in the notch.  The three horizontal slats below the beam are unfinished strapping for the ceiling to the right.

On the right side of the first photo, a new support column had to be built.  It consists of three 2×4s stacked together and placed alongside part of the brick wall.  You can only see one of the three 2×4s (the others are stacked behind it), and there’s a lot of other stuff going on in this photo, but here’s what it looks like:

Right side support for new beam

Again on this side, there’s an extra 2×4 to support the outside of the beam and hold it in place horizontally.  The plywood over top of the column is extra support for cabinets.

In the end, we lowered the ceiling below the bathroom by about 6 inches.  The old ceiling was somewhere around 9 feet, so we’ve still got an 8 1/2-foot ceiling in that part of the kitchen.  Not too bad.

Progress today was less dramatic.  There’s a lot of that plywood bracing for cabinets:

Plywood supports for cabinets

And the plumbing for the sink was moved:

A very exciting picture of new pipes

I am pleased to report that we have had daily inspections and have, to my knowledge, passed them all.  Every day when he’s allowed downstairs, Ruskin heads straight for the kitchen and sniffs everything from new construction to floor protectors to tools that the workers left behind for the night.  As far as I know, his only complaint has been that it’s “different.”

The inspector at work

Also today, Anne had her LASIK enhancement.  We ordered from Redbones and ate in near-darkness to avoid hurting her eyes.  Afterward I finally washed some dishes in the upstairs bathroom.  It was awkward without a drying rack.  I was constantly worried about clogging the drain with the little amount of food left on the plates.  And I just know I’m going to drop a bunch of glasses trying to carry them up and down the stairs all the time.  Maybe plastic is best.

construction, framing, inspections, open walls, plumbing