what a day! we're jacking up our house!!
started out demolishing a slice of ceiling and part of wall on first floor to get at the 2nd floor joists. yes, we bought hard hats. no, we're not re-enacting the village people. (as always, please remember that any photo on the blog is clickable and will open a larger version.)
found evidence of an angled wall and tin ceilings. none of it the sort of thing you'd want to preserve. in the end we'll just cover it again with another drop ceiling.
once the mess was cleaned up, we built the temporary beam that will carry all the lifting across joists.
we hung the beam from several joists using deck brackets. didn't read about that strategy in any of the material i found online regarding installation of a beam, but certainly made the job of installing jacks and posts easier since we could just continue to hang material from successive members until we were ready to put on the pressure.
which shouldn't leave you with the impression that this was an easy job. we re-installed one of the bracing jacks FOUR times in attempt to level it properly until we finally realized the screw wasn't true. in fact, in this photo you can clearly see the angle of the bolt coming out of the jack is not aligned. i have to admit home depot took it back no questions asked. literally, they didn't even want to know what was wrong with it.
as for the lifiting power, it's all contained in this little red bottle. note to self, make sure the release valve is completely shut before walking away. we were marvelling at how unsqueeky the 2nd floor was when there was a loud crash. hydraulic jack had settled just enough to let the post slip free. now it's back, everything's true, and it's all we can do to not give the little fella another pump.
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