c1860 Home in Upstate NY PROJECT

[krm944]

Happy Holidays to all,

In May 2006 my wife and I purchased an older home in my hometown. It had been on the market for awhile and the seller accepted our offer. We were the proud owners of our first home.

I am in the military and stationed in San Diego. This house will be used while I am overseas on deployments. We paid literally pennies for the home, so we can afford to keep a west coast and east coast residence.

The project:

My wife had the upstaris lathe and plaster removed from the ceilings and walls. One of the laborers insulated incorrectly so i have to redo some portions of that. the upstairs is actually on hold right now as we focus on the downstairs kitchen area.

I will try to get some pictures up, but let me remind you i am on the west coast!!

I have a short medium and long term plans for the house. Obviously one of my problems is living on the west coast and hiring out some of the work i KNOW i can do.

Short term:

There was a wood shed attached to the back of the house.The exterior wall of teh hosue was removed and living space expanded into the shed. The shed has a cathedral ceiling and was framed with rough cut 2x4 wood and insulated with R11 faced insuslation and not sheet rocked. The dimensions of this room are 12' 6 by 18'6 (width is 18'6) This is the future site of the kitchen. The floor is very spongy and will need attention before cabinets can go in.

Materials have been purchased to insulate the new kitchen. The walls will be sistered or firred to 6 inches and r19 insulation installed in the walls. 2x10s will sandwich the existing ceiling studs and r 30 will be installedover vents This will insulate the room short term until we begin phase 2.

Phase 2 will make the mud room larger and accomodate the oil furnace hot water heater and water pump in an attempt to get equipment out of a wet basement.

At this time we will tear the floor out of the kitchen. We will use this opportunity to run plumbing and heating ducts in the crawl space. I may even dig the crawl space down a bit so that it can be accessed easily. What are the pros and cons to making a bigger crawl space under teh floor?? install new floor joists the and subflooring. What will i need to use for floor joists to span 13 feet?? is 2x10 16 in on center adequate??

one of my ideas was to have a soffit built around the exterior wall of the room at about 9 feet or so (above cabinets) and install recessed and track lighting in/on this. There is very little wiring in this room right now and it will be insulated soon. I dont know where i want receptacles yet, and hoped to use this soffit as my avenue for all wiring for the kitchen dining room. I am having a wire run for a celing fan in the center of the cathedral ceiling to push heat down. What are the pros and cons to my soffit idea?

Potential Problems/ My solution
Walls out of Plumb- Use hand planer to trim firring strips to plumb walls
Ducting-Can flexible ducting be used from oil furnace to existing ducting?
Will my existing furnace work in its new location?


This is a project i hope to add more info and insight as it progresses

very respectfully

kyle and angela

[Snoonyb]

Structures are built from the foundation up, not the reverse.
Investigate the foundation, prior to any excavation.
To maintain the structural stability of the foundation, within the soil, no excavation can cause an angle to that foundation exceeding 45 degrees of slope, IE. 1' vertical: 1' horizontal.

Here is a link to structural span tables;
http://www.cwc.ca/design/tools/calcs/SpanCalc_2002/

Typically, cathedral ceilings have a structural beam as the ridge which carries part of the roof loading to the ends where a vertical post transfers the load to the foundation.
One of the symptoms of an inadequate ridge beam, is the walls deflecting, IE., out of plumb.
There are several methods of correcting this. Planning the walls would be a last resort, as it does not address the root cause.