Installing New Main Bearing Wall

New Bearing Wall In Place (view from Entry Hall)

Here are some photos from the installation of the new posts and beam in center of the house. The wood is the Douglas Fir that we picked up last week. The wood is wet (ie: moisture content is 35% or more). Wet wood shrinks as it dries, so we had it milled lightly oversize (beam width of 13.25″ instead of 13″).

As it shrinks the supported upper floor will drop, so we wanted to minimize this effect on doors etc upstairs. The idea was to jack the entire second floor up by an extra 0.25″ and then place the beam and posts, and set it back down.

Unfortunately we could not jack it up this much. We could get it about 1/8th inch max. So we dropped the beam back down and planed it to the exact size, and then installed again.

So the second floor will drop as the beam shrinks. Plan B: if it shrinks too much we can use wedges to raise the second floor in a year or so if the second floor comes down too much (I will leave access  to the top of beam so I can do this wedging if necessary. My trim at top of beam will be ‘floating’ so it will hide any gap that results from wedging.

Ryan, Jimmy, and Brandon Look over the old beam after removal. It was not too heavy, so it was just lowered by hand. House is supported by another identical beam (on far left of photo) so not too much shoring was needed. One joist dropped down about 1/4″, but that was the only movement upon removal.

Jimmy trims the end of the double beam in kitchen. It will remain, but we want a nice flush fit to the new beam that us going to butt up to it.

New beam being lifted into position. It is about 400 lbs. Ryan is practicing for strong-man contest!

Large corner posts are fit into place. They are over sized, however the closest one in this pic stands alone between kitchen and dining room, so we wanted it to have a “presence”!

New beam and all supporting posts are in place. The middle 4 posts all form a “feature wall” that will separate dining area from front entry all. The middle section shows roughed in framing. It will be covered with t&g yellow cedar that was salvaged from original walls. the two side panels will get a different treatment, maybe glass panels or ??? I will decide on this over then next couple of weeks.

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