When I was fixing the framing from the earlier post I made a sad, sad realization…
That the wet walls for the master bath and laundry were really, really uh, odd…
So odd in fact that I have been staring at them for a while now and my head is just swimming…
There appears to be soooo much wrong with this area that I’m at a loss as to where to start and how to go about fixing all these issues…or honestly if they are serious issues or not.

To help organize my thoughts and aggravations I’m going to break the issues I see down into two sections. This area we are talking about is the intersection between the old and new and some framing in the addition.

First off,

Take a look at the picture below of the floor framing of the two story addition.
 

The floor is framed with #1 2by6’s 16″oc that span 11′ they are attached with joist hangers at both ends.
The joists are at their max allowable span for #1 2by6’s with a live load of 40psf, and dead load of 20psf and a deflection of L/360. (not sure if thats the case here)
The beam in the middle of the span is what I’m confused about.
So officially the joists don’t need a beam at their mid-point right?

The PO chose to tile the floor above with large format 18″ square tiles.
I’m guessing that they installed this beam because they wanted a much less bouncy floor for the tile job…makes sense no?……well no, wait till you see how the beam is installed…

The Beam
The beam is a Select Structural 4by8 that spans ~11′. Double jack studs on one side and a hanger on the other.
 

From my CBC span table for interior load bearing girders I get a max span of 4′-1″ (for a double 2by8)that’s for #2 wood with 2 floors above.
This beam is structural select so it should span farther but I can’t seem to find a girder span table that takes grade into account?
From the joist span tables going from #2 wood to select structural gives you about 2′ more in span.
So lets say this beam can safely span 6’…yet its set to span 11′!
Maybe they were thinking that the beam isn’t really loaded and this long span would still be enough to take the ‘bounce’ out of the floor to make it suitable for tiling?
The floor above doesn’t really bounce and I have seen no evidence of the tile/grout cracking after a year of living here.

If you look at the picture above it looks like the beam is supported at that little wall and farther down at its end…but its not.
Take a look at these pics.

The short wall.
 

This was built after the beam was put in place and it doesn’t actually touch the beam…If they had just built the wall two inches longer (to the right) they could of supported the beam at ~4′ in.

Missed it by that much
 

The wall on the lower left is the wall for the bathroom…instead of just building it under the beam and supporting it (and making a tiny bath a couple inches bigger) they built it exactly to miss the beam?”

Here’s My Favorite Part
 

The beam is hung from an existing (original to the house) ~6by6 beam by a joist hanger.
One side of the hanger is filled with 16D nails (good) but the side pictured looks like its been installed with drywall screws to me! At least they used the heavy grade hangers.
Also, do you see that line at about the mid point on the hanger? That’s where the beam ends and the between the joists blocking begins.

So, the hanger is hung mostly from the blocking…is that a good thing?

What we have here is one beam hung off the other and you’d expect there to be at least a 4by4 post under this area right?

Noooope, this is what I meant by a ‘beam to no where’.

Check out this shot below
 

You can see where the one beam is connected to the other and right underneath it is….nothing….
For some freaking reason they decided having a vertical soil pipe in that EXACT spot was more important than supporting this junction.

This pic shows that this junction is supported by a single 2by4!
 

And its not even under it but next to it? The original beam spans probably 6″ past this lone 2by4 ‘post’.

At the bottom of the soil pipe it even looks like theres an elbow that if removed would probably exactly clear up enough space for the needed post.
 

Why did they not do this? Arrrgh!

Original Beam and Wet Wall

Check out this shot of the original beam.
 

Its being supported by another crappy conglomeration of non-plumb, crushed at the top looking 2by4 studs.
They installed the studs tight to one edge. So there is ~2″ of unsupported edge on this beam. It looks to me like the beam has rotated down a bit on the unsupported side….
I installed a nice 4by6 post on the one end, but all of this mess??? I don’t know what to do about it.
This beam supports the joists for the original back porch area of the house and there’s been an addition built on top of that, though, the joists in the 2nd story addition run at right angles to these.

Holy Bowing Studs Part 2
 

Here’s a pulled back shot. Bowing, bent, unplumb studs.
I’d love to just rip out the studs one at a time and replace them with 2by6’s to fully support the beam but there is a problem.

They framed a wet wall in the way.
 

So, instead of using 2by6’s to fully support the load bearing header they chose to do this conglomeration of crap! You see that band of double 2by4’s along the top? That’s part of the framing for the dropped ceiling in the laundry room and its directly in the way of using 2by6 studs!
It seems like I’m going to have to demolish the ceiling and this wall just to fix it.
Or, can it be fixed in place.

This entire ridiculous thing could of been avoided if they would of used 2by6 studs and just brought all the plumbing out to this side and then framed a non load bearing 2by4 wall to cover it. They would of lost a couple of inches max out of the size of this room.

Another shot of the corner.
 

All that wood just sorta tacked on everywhere…whoever built this sure didn’t mind wasting wood…

Questions I need help with
 

1. Is the beam doing something useful? If so should I be supporting is more along its length?
2. What the heck to do with the beam-beam intersection?
3. Is there a way to rebuild that 2by4 wet wall with 2by6’s and not have to totally destroy the walls-ceiling attached to it?

Geez, just writing this made me tired…