Sagging ceiling fix
It was time to get back to work on the house, I did however spend most of the day with my daughter Izzi and it wasn’t until 6pm that I started to get some new work done.
There had been a few jobs weighing heavily on me and one in particular would be a job that was a little out of my comfort zone. Basically the ceiling near the loft entrance and over the void above the staircase was bagging down into the space, nothing instantly noticeable but something of concern. Looking at the wall next to the bag there was a large crack, a crack that seemed to represent the wall breaking away and following the ceiling into the sagging void. It was such a bad state of affairs that I’d thanked my lucky stars that I’d not ventured out over that part of the ceiling in my adventures in the loft. I had a feeling that it might not carry my weight so work was pretty important.
I’d researched how to fix up a sagging ceiling and had bought all the bits and bobs to get it done but I’d just been avoiding doing the work. It now needed to be done, my plans now were to fit a new loft entrance and ladder which meant a large frame needed to be fitted in the vicinity of the loft entrance. As the joists were all out of kilter in this area due to the sagging then something needed to be done first to even them all out.
Anyway a large joist was first cut to size and hung on joist hangers between the two main A-Frames in the loft, basically stretching from one side of the door the to other and spanning the whole of the affected ceiling. I then employed two bottle jacks and some long props of wood to prop the ceiling up, on the end of the props I screwed a shorted length of wood to join the props and protect the ceiling. After a few wobbly moments and suffering again from working alone I managed to get a firm propping excecuted, bottle jacks underneath and ready to jack.
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Working gradually I slowly jacked each jack, the ceiling moved without much resistance while making lots of satisfying cracking noises. I alternated from one jack to another, inspecting the movement of the ceiling joists in the attic. Slowly pumping each of the jacks and within minutes the faulty joists were level with the bottom of the new spanning joist I’d installed earlier. I was quite worried about the props shearing and breaking but there was little drama, once I was satisfied that the joists were in their correct positions I resorted to dozens of nails and some joist joining widgets I had, lots of bashing later and my new joist was happily carrying the once bendy joists underneath.
Rather than moving along to finish the job I decided to retire to bed and left the props in place. I thought this best as it would allow the roof accept it’s new predicament before I removed the supports and allowed it to rest on my engineering.