Good and Bad

I’m going to be mixing in some quick posts that just share small things I’ve found along the way.

Yesterday I went over to Mintwood to look at some framing with the carpenters. The whole building is done in true 2x dimensional lumber, so in many ways it is a tank. Still, it’s 120 years old, so I’m curious about the old techniques. For example, they don’t have joist hangers and Simpson Strong Ties(c) so how did they do things? One clue was my fireplace. They needed to hang a joist to support the fireplace hearth, and that joist is perpendicular to the other joists. How do they tie it in? Mortise and tenon joinery! (If you’re a furniture maker, you’ll appreciate this). You can still see the scribe lines on the outside of the joist where they marked and cut for this. Amazing attention to detail.

On the “less than great” end, we noticed that the stairs are not done so well. The landing for the stairs (leading from 2nd floor to 3rd floor) rests on a piece of blocking that is just toe-nailed into the studs.

Of course after a century of use, the block has settled slightly, which contributes to the sag in the stairs. We’re going to do our best to level up the stairs, and we’ll put a post under this end of the joist so that the weight is property transferred to bearing parts of the framing.

And finally, some things never change. We all love indoor plumbing, but I continue to be amazed at how plumbers are willing to hack up framing. Check out how they notched this 2×12 and turned it into a 2×4 so they could install a bathtub.

It’s a wonder the tub didn’t fall the 11′ down to the ground floor!

We will address all of these as we work on the framing. Demolition is slated to wrap up ~March 23, and the framers will start their work on March 29th.

#oldworld #framing #carpentry #pittsburgh