Probably one of the most underused items by the DIY-er is the
joist hanger. Most people just don’t understand why you need them and
assume nails and screws are enough, which is true for some situations but definitely
not all. Joist hangers make a huge difference for anything that takes
real weight (floors, decks, “plumbers boxes”) that does not rest on a plate. This is a blog post
dedicated to those mighty pieces of thinly formed metal that pick up all the
slack that a simple nail cannot handle.
Now let me start out by reminding you, our lovely reader, that
our houses were all built in the 1920’s and 1930’s which means joist hangers
didn’t really exist. The joist hanger
patent was filed in 1957 and published in 1962. Because of this, I can’t really blame the
original framing carpenters for any joist issues we had to fix.
Disclaimer: The pictures you are about to see are very real and
have not changed for the purposes of this blog post. No animals were hurt
in the jacking and fixing of the floor framing (although Teddy yapped at us through the door as he thought his life
was in danger since we would not let him in the room with us while we were
performing this work), and, of course, we were safe at all times (we both
still have every appendage on our bodies ;)).
Let the story begin: It all
started about 2 weeks after we bought our Charlotte house. I noticed a sag in the ceiling of one of the bedrooms. Neither
Brooke nor I noticed it on the numerous walk-throughs of the house before we
took possession. There is a small half bath above the bedroom with the
slightly sagging ceiling, so I immediately assumed we had a leak that was
covered up by the real estate company for selling. Whether that was or
was not the case, either way we were going to have to figure out the issue and
fix it.
Step 1: Find the problem:
I started out by Hulk-busting through the ceiling with my bare
fist. Hulk-busting sounds cool, right?
This made a hole big enough next to the toilet pipe so we could flush the
toilet a few times and see if it was leaking or not.
 |
| Matt hulk-busting through the ceiling to check for leaks |
The toilet was
actually not currently leaking, but we did find evidence of a previous leak that was quickly fixed and left
there for the mold to grow and
procreate and make evil spawn that would blacken the top of the ceiling around
the bottom of the toilet. Upon slowing tearing down the ceiling until no
more mold was present, the real problem
did become evident.
 |
| Tearing down all dry wall with any presence of old mold |
 |
| Old mold on drywall demolition |
The floor joists for the second floor bathroom were
sagging. In framing for the upstairs half bath, the joist direction was
changed to accommodate for the waste pipe of the toilet. It quickly
became obvious that all the joists
that were a part of this framed area were
sagging, so we opened up the ceiling to expose all sagging joists (which
ended up being half the room).
 |
| Joists changed direction to be parallel with toilet waste pipe |
 |
| Sagging joists |
 |
| Two (2) finger length of sagging joist to carrying beam (joists should be flush with each other) |
Upon exposing half the ceiling, we also found a mostly rotted floor joist as well from the old toilet leak that was previously quickly fixed without treating any damage or mold by a previous contractor.
 |
| Mostly rotted floor joist from the old toilet leak |
 |
| Sawzall used to open ceiling efficiently |
 |
| Half the ceiling exposed until no more joists were sagging |
Step 2: Remedy the problem – fix all damage and treat all mold:
Before we started jacking up joists, we first had to make sure we had a clean environment to work in. We disposed of all the moldy drywall after demo and then treated all joists with bleach.
 |
| Treating joists with bleach |
The solution sounds simple - re-level the ceiling and patch it
up. What happened in real life was simple, but time consuming and fairly
involved to do it properly and safely. As most of the wood joists were in
good shape (except the one rotted joist), simply leveling and adding the joist
hanger was enough in most cases.
The typical setup we have was this for each joist:
We placed a column jack in the basement first directly below the
joist we were jacking on the second floor. Then we used another
jack post, and 2x4’s to raise the individual joist back to level. Once the
joist was level with carrying beam for that joist, we then installed the joist hanger with proper
sized nails to fasten the joist in place.
 |
| Jack post raising joist to level |
 |
| Two (2) 2x4's nailed together in a T shape for extra strength |
 |
| Jack and 2x4's used to raise joist to level |
***A few tips:
1. Once the joist hanger is flush to all surfaces of wood as possible, the joist hanger has 2 small nailing points to tack the joist
hanger in place (shown in picture below).
2. Make sure you put a nail in every single hole of the joist
hanger, the company that built the hanger usually recommends the proper size nail based on hanger
size.
3. If you want to use screws and not nails, make sure you
use the proper size and structural rated screws. (We used Simpson brand
for everything (hangers, nails, screws, etc.))***
 |
| Simpson double joist hanger |
 |
| Simpson joist hanger flush to carrying beam |
Joists in tight locations. Although most applications
to the joist were the same (move the jacks, jack the next joist up, nail hanger,
and joist in place), a couple joists required a bit more work, due to the odd location.
In the hard to reach areas we used screws or a palm nailer as we couldn’t get enough leverage to
nail with a hammer. Mostly we used screws which involved getting creative with bits and
extensions and drilling small holes for said bits and extensions to drive in
the screws.
 |
| The 3 joists hangers in the right of this picture were in tight locations |
 |
| Palm nailer used to nail in joist hangers in some tight locations |
Rotted Joist. The last joist, the one
that was rotted, we had to sister. We did this by cutting a 2x8 to the
proper length, then using construction adhesive we glued and nailed/screwed the
rotted joist to the new joist. Once everything was again jacked and in
place we used a double joist hanger on this joist.
 |
| Completed re-framed and level ceiling with joist hangers |
When we closed up the ceiling, we used
layers of drywall to makes sure the ceiling was nice and level again. You
can learn about patching drywall holes at How to Patch a Wall Hole.
...read more “Ode to the Joist Hanger”
