Monday, April 16, 2007

House Issues Part 2: Great Room Floor

Everything was all set to get stone floors put in the great room, when it occurred to our contractor that the structure may not be able to support all of that heavy stone. We contacted the engineer we had used on a few other structural things, and sure enough, stone is too heavy for the structure. In fact, plywood sub floor is too heavy for it! So now we have to reinforce the great room floor by putting in a beam... in the guest room. I would think that the proper thing to do would be to open up the walls and ceiling in the guest room and re-frame it with some more serious lumber. But the walls were framed months ago, then insulated, dry-walled, textured and painted. So the "fix" is to add a beam across the room and also some posts to hold it up. They're going to build it inside the current structure of the room! And the best part is that they are going to stick it in between two windows that really shouldn't have anything in between them. I'm not explaining it very well, because I am a bit dumbfounded by the whole thing. I am trying to trust the contractors that it won't look as bad as I imagine it will. We'll see. It has delayed the start of the floors a bit, but they got started on them today.

2 comments:

Emily said...

Can you have the stone once the floor is shored up? And are these posts going to be against the walls at least? If so, you could frame them with drywall, paint them to match the rest of the room, and call them a design element!

Daisy said...

Yes, we still get the stone floor. In fact, they started on it yesterday. They're starting on the outsides of the room, where the support is fine. And yes, they will be against the walls, so we will do our best to make them look "on purpose". I need to get a picture of the room to illustrate why I'm so concerned about how it will look. Don't worry, it will still be a great guest room, so PLEASE come use it!