Relaxing weekends, squeaky floors, and work.
I had a great relaxing weekend. I did essentially nothing until last night. It was great.
About a month ago the kitchen floor near the laundry closet started squeaking again. I had ‘fixed’ this when I re-did the floor by screwing up through the subfloor into the base plate of a wall. This seemed to resecure the squeaky boards to the wall, and things were happy. It appears that with the seasonal changes the screws pulled a bit through the subfloor, rendering them useless. What a bummer. For the last few weeks when we ran the washing machine in the spin cycle things got loud. Very loud.
This part of the subfloor shows signs of past water damage, so I’m not surprised it’s a bit squeaky. The joist cross-bracing in the crawl-space was also coming un-nailed, and the joists were starting to torque a bit. So yesterday evening I found myself crawling around under the house armed with a new 2×4, a tube of PL400, 3 inch decking screws, and a 2 ton hydraulic bottle jack.
I removed the screws I had installed in December, PL400-ed a 2×4 to the floor between the joists, and then screwed the 2×4 through the subfloor into the wall base plate above. The 2×4 gives the screws a lot more wood to grab ahold of, the PL400 expands when it dries, and the result is a lot better hold and a lot more force on the subfloor keeping it in place. I did this between two joists, which were the epicenter of the squeak. Then I took the bottle jack, turned it on its side, and torqued the joists back to true. I then re-cross braced the joists, and did a full bock between two of them. This should help keep them in line better, and will hopefully reduce the effect of the changing seasons.
If the floor squeaks again this fall, I’ve got another good idea to try that will involve more PL400, sistering the joists, and another bottle jack. Hopefully, the fix this time will be enough overkill (I think it will) to keep that from being necessary.
This is my last week as an employee of E-Gineering, LLC. I’ll be moving to another Indianapolis based consulting firm, Moser, Inc. I’ll be taking on the role of Senior Consultant, and I’m looking forward to the move.