Holdups

fabricated-steel-hanger

We didn’t know we needed a custom fabricated steel hanger a few weeks ago. Things come up when you are adding on to an old house.

When our contractor showed me it was not possible to connect two beams, I called Kevin, our structural consultant. There was no room on one side of a beam to attach a standard joist hanger, and a workaround was needed.

Kevin quickly provided a solution that looked like this:

solution-sketch

After taking a few minutes to figure out Kevin’s drawing, I quickly made a sketch of my own that looked like like this:

sketch

To better understand things, it is sometimes handy to make a three-dimensional sketch.

While the solution was arrived at quickly, the fabrication of the offset hanger took over a week. The hanger will be attached with big bolts through four holes.

holes-drilled-in-beams

Drilling the holes took an entire day. A heavy duty drill was required to bore through the steel plate in the center of the beam, and a special lift was required to hold up the drill.

While all this additional work holds up the project, the temporary partition is still holding up the second floor (see ”A Lump-less Kitchen” May 16th).

view-from-kitchen

John and I are looking forward to the day when a beam is held up by the custom fabricated steel hanger, and our project is not.

live. enjoy. repeat.

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