Symptoms
Structural problems announce themselves through finishes. If several of these are showing up in the same area of the house, it's usually one cause.
None of these means the house is falling down. Most are slow and long-standing. But they're all worth understanding rather than living with, because the repair only gets larger.
Work
| Sill plate & rim joist | The most common serious rot we find, usually caused by grade too high against the siding, a failed deck ledger, or years of splash-back. Repaired in sections with the wall temporarily supported above. |
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| Joists | Sistered where the damage is partial, replaced where it isn't. Also the fix for bouncy floors that were framed to a lighter standard than modern loading expects. |
| Headers | Undersized or absent headers over openings, very common where previous owners widened a doorway or added a window without one. Replaced with correctly sized dimensional lumber or LVL. |
| Load-bearing removal | Taking out a wall that's carrying load. Engineered beam, shored during installation, with the load path continued through posts and blocking down to a footing. |
| Columns & footings | Failed or improvised basement columns replaced with properly sized posts on adequate footings. Frequently the real fix for a sagging main floor. |
| Rafters & roof structure | Rotted rafter tails, sagging ridges, undersized rafters, and collar tie or purlin work where a roof has spread. |
| Fire & water damage | Rebuilding structure after a leak, a burst pipe or a fire, including working with your insurer's scope. |
Nearly every structural repair we do started as somebody noticing something cosmetic.
Process
We work out the cause, not just the symptom. A sloping floor caused by a rotted sill is a completely different repair from one caused by an undersized girder, and quoting before you know which is guessing.
Significant load path changes and anything unusual gets stamped drawings. It costs a bit up front and it makes the permit and inspection straightforward.
Temporary support sized for the actual load, installed before anything is cut. This is the part where doing it properly is not optional.
The load path has to be continuous from the repair all the way down to a footing. We follow it the whole way rather than stopping at the visible part.
Photographed at every stage before it's covered, and inspected. You get the record.
If you're seeing sudden movement — a crack that's visibly widened in weeks, a floor that's dropped, or anything that changed after a storm — call somebody today, us or otherwise. That's a different situation from the slow settlement most houses show.
For everything else, structural problems in an older house are usually decades in the making and a few more weeks won't change the outcome. Take the time to understand it properly and get more than one opinion. We're happy to be one of them.
Related work