Bang! Bang! Bang!

There's been an amazing amount of hammering and sawing going on during the last two weeks. The contractors have been strengthening the floor under the dining room and kitchen. They've set up the saw right under John's desk:

John has mentioned that he's been startled out of his chair more than once in the past few days. With that saw, they've been cutting new laminated wood joists to length and "sistering" them alongside the existing floor joists:

Here's the view from the other direction:

After the floor strengthening, it was on to the fire blocking. (Ayse talked about this in detail in a previous post.) Here are two examples. The first are end blocks (4x12's):

The second are blocks within a joist bay (2x12's):

To be up to current fire code, this blocking needed to be installed everywhere under the floors. They did that, but the whole operation took the better part of two weeks to complete. Wow.

posted by noel on 02/07/05