Sunday, August 3, 2008

The Word of the Day Is...

Aleve. What a fabulous drug! Getting out of bed this morning was amazingly hard because I didn't take my Aleve early enough yesterday. I will have to remember this as the project proceeds.

We finished reinforcing the joists as best as possible. The wonderful builder of our home didn't lay things out well, so in order to put the kitchen light fixture in the center of the room they moved one end of one of the joist, resulting in a bowed joist that didn't adhere well to the new reinforcing. Quality work, eh?

Apparently I need to back-track a bit because not all the readers of this blog are engineers, nor did they all have materials science or similar courses. That being said, the problem with our joists is that they moved downward too much when weight was applied to them. If too much of that bending (a.k.a. deflection) occurs the tiles will separate from the thin-set that adheres them to the floor or the grout or tile will crack.

We've borrowed mom's truck for the week in order to acquire all the big materials for the project, such as plywood and backer board.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dann asks: Hy-Lander (get it?) not big enough for the "bulk" supplies?

Anne said...

Ha ha (for everyone else, my new car, a hybrid highlander = hy-lander) - no, it does not hold 4'x8' stuff without the tailgate open - and it would get dirty :-)