The Sky is Falling

Okay, so not quite but we Ryan did take part of the ceiling in the kitchen so that we could sister the second floor joists. You see, when we took out the half bathroom on the first floor we noticed a whole mess of issues with the joists for the upstairs bathroom. Shotty, work.. surprise, surprise. So we knew, that before we could cover back up the ceiling/ run electrical, we would need to reinforce the joists (later when we renovate the upstairs bathroom we'll have to take everything out down to the subfloor but for now, we just need to make the upstairs bathroom stable). So, led to our plans for last night.

Looking up at the joists in the second floor bathroom.

It might not be as apparent in the above picture but the joists were all cut through and only reinforced partly. We wanted to reinforce the entire joist to re-distribute the weight and strengthen the entire joist. (Currently, I'm afraid I'm going to fall through the floor just about every time I shower... it's quite an adventure.) 

So, first thing was first, taking down the ceiling.

Ripping down the ceiling

And some more

Done.

Easy, peasy. The second part was a lot trickier since in some parts of the joists we would need to put a bolt through three pieces of wood (the original joist, their patch job and our sister joist) and of course, because nothing is easy, our drill can only make it through two pieces of wood.

Ryan drilling the hole in the first two pieces of wood that we will then drill through the sister joist. 

And we almost finished but we forgot to drill a hole through the last part of the two pieces of wood and since we had already bolted in the 8 other bolts, that joist wasn't going anywhere. Sigh. 

Almost done.

So, Ryan's off to buy yet another drill (we have atleast two now) that is longer so that we can drill through the three pieces together. Oh well, atleast this week is a productive one. 

Clearly, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product but once we get our new drill and finish the other joist, you'll get to see the exciting, finished product. Oh, no? Joists aren't that exciting to you? Yeah, me either but atleast I don't have to fear for my life every time I shower.