I’ve mentioned that we have a lot of projects going on around the farm, and the latest was a repair to the garage.

Our home is pretty unique in that it has a rather modest living area but comes with two additional apartments. There is an apartment in the basement of the main house and an apartment over the three car garage.

This appealed to us because we wanted a place for both my father (the basement) and my mother-in-law (the garage) to live, as they are getting older and it is nice to be able to take care of them.

A few months ago we noticed that the floor of the apartment over the garage was sagging. The garage itself is pretty large, 39 feet by 28 feet, and there were no supports in the middle. After 20 years the weight of the kitchen and bathroom, both with tile floors, was causing the joists to bend.

I called my general contractor, Cory Saunders, and he said there was a pretty straightforward fix. We had it installed today.

Before	After

This involved getting three 40 foot LVLs and putting them in place, longways, in the middle of the garage.

Of course the hardest part was moving all of the stuff out of the way so the crew could work. That took awhile, especially since we had to pull things away from the walls on either side.

A crew of six showed up about 8am and got to it.

They finished up around 1pm. I’m pretty happy with the result.

They said they had to raise it at least three inches on the left side and about two and a half in the middle.

It does make a huge difference in the apartment. There used to be a slight squeak when you were walking on the floor, especially down the middle hallway, but it feels really solid now.

I’m going to have to get used to the new pole in the middle, as everything was open before, and it will take us awhile to get everything back into place (and perhaps I’ll take the time to get rid of some stuff). It should be far enough out of the way not to cause any issues with our vehicles.

Ah, the joys of home ownership. Watch this space for even more projects, as we have a lot in the queue.