A header is meant to support the span of the door so that the weight of the house is not actually on the door but on the header above the door. What happens if you don’t build the header correctly? You’ll have weight bearing down on things that aren’t designed to take weight.
What happens if you don’t build the header correctly and the door is on the corner of the house? You get a door that’s almost impossible to open.
What happens if you put a lot more weight on a floor than it’s designed to handle and leave it there for a long time. You’ll get a lot of sag. Approximately 5/8 to 3/4 inch in our case.
See that “header” above the door? All the weight was on those 2×4’s nailed together, which in turn sit on two 2×4’s below them. That’s why the door wouldn’t open.
Apparently, the holding mess that was in the house a couple of owners ago was concentrated in the dining area, which is why the floor sags there.
These two “whichs” are why my mentor said, “Well, we’re putting off electrical for a few more days so we can fix the structural issues.”
So with the help of a third man, we built a temporary wall to support the structure while we knocked out the “header.” Then we jacked up the roof and installed two LVL beams to make a new header for the entire door/window section, making sure that the supports for the beams rested on the columns below in the crawl space.
And by then, it was time to quit. So we boarded up the gaping hole, hung plastic to protect it all from rainfall, cleaned up, and called it a day.
Well, the other two gentlemen called it a day (at least for this project). I continued by clearing the floor of any debris and marking the floor, with the help of a six-foot level, for the areas where it sags.
Tomorrow we get to do it all again, except in the crawl space, without the ridiculously heavy LVL beams.
I’d like to find out who the “contractor” is that put this together and send photos of this “work” to every building inspector in the county along with his name. “You might want to check his work carefully.”
