Hole in the ceiling!

We moved into this house in Kannami in Spring of 2011.  The house was just shy of 20 years old then. We were renters then. We're not renters anymore. We bought the house in January of this year. 

We liked everything about the house the first day we saw it with the realtor, or almost everything. We liked everything sans the fact that  it was slanted!  We got used to living in a slanted house after a while, but that was the first project after buying so the house isn't slanted anymore. We noticed another problem, or my wife noticed it rather, before they were even done working on the foundation though. She noticed a hole in the living room ceiling. She noticed it after I pointed it out to her. It was a hole just big enough for a person to crawl through. This is the story about that hole.  This is a picture story.
It's a confession of sorts too.  I made the hole! 

The hole shortly after my wife noticed it sometime in July. There's a boy stuck in it in this picture.

 I made the hole so I could see if turning the flat ceiling into an open beam one was possible. After poking my head up there I decided it in fact was, so one September afternoon a month or so after getting the foundation work done I sent my wife a text asking if it would be okay to make a bigger hole in the ceiling. (I'd already made it so was hoping she'd say "Yes" and as luck would have it she did say "Yes", or "ii desu yo" rather, which is like yes and made me so happy that I took a screen shot of our conversation to mark the beginning of my living room remodel occasion. Names and top secret family info and has been redacted for security)

But back to the ceiling.

Here's the hole she came home to that day (left) right there next to the lunch I was eating while texting her, then the hole again a day or two later.  It grew and grew over the next few days till there was no more ceiling for a hole to be in. 

The hole grew

and grew

and grew...

and grew some more

I used pieces of sheetrock, a cereal box and box, etc., to block off the gaping hole leading under the upstairs floor since we were still running the AC at the time. 

After getting a good chunk of the ceiling sheetrock removed I got to work on the southwest corner.  It's engineered for no post in the corner with 4x12 beams running the length of each wall but still, I wanted a post! I'd have had to tear out stucco and part of the bay window if I took out the whole post so I opted for cutting it back as far as I could, notching top and bottom, bolting the new piece of post in, adding straps for good measure, bracing and blocking it all to high heaven and sheeting it with 1/2" plywood.

Close-up of the post-less corner (top half before notching)

After notching

Notching the bottom was a royal pain in the keister and then some!  I'd have never been able to do it if not for having great parental units kind enough to send me my Porter Cable keyless chuck sawzall. Shopping around for sawzalls here left me wanting my old Porter Cable all the more.  Ya just can't beat Porter Cable Tiger Saw for remodels. 

Above is my trusty Porter Cable Tiger sawzall with the notched 4x4 (top) I could've never made without it in the background. I should mention somewhere too that 4x4 is true 4" by 4" posts in this land -- 105x105mm. 

After cutting and notching I marked the hole I really didn't want to have to replace the entire top at the pop out window here so cut it just a little oversize and put trim around it to hide the gap after ceiling was all finished and job almost done as seen below.

I still need to stain over the nails again but here it is after trim

And the top. You can see the cut wallpaper, which is where I had to cut the hole on top about 6" away from the post so it'd slide in. I replaced that piece of plywood, put a 4x4 block over the top of it up in the wall and re-glued the wallpaper after all was said and done.

The piece I had to cut out in order to have enough room to slide the post in before being replaced/nailed is happy as I prepare to return it to its original position and nail it to the bottom of the 4x4 block at the post. 

I started feeling good about progress being made once a lot of the sheetrock was off so just had to pose for a timer cam shot.  Cheese! Japanese dropped ceilings are built with 1 1/2" x 1 1/8" lumber.  Joists are about 12" on center and tied off every few feet. It's surprisingly strong for such small dimension lumber and more than adequate for supporting the wieght of the ceiling. 

Anyhow so look at me look at me fun hanging from the ceiling like a monkey but much work still to be done so...  
 back to work!

 Here's a shot of the post all notched and ready to be installed in the corner with trusty sawzall in foreground. I got it in on the second try, the post was cut perfectly (measure 10x cut once!) but the bottom notch needed some cleaning up before it'd slide in just so. 

Extra bracing--good medicine for my if not when mega quake anxiety.

Side note on all the 4x4 blocking. When the foundation fortifying company was here pumping a few foundations worth of concrete under the house they used 4x4 braces to brace up the concrete drainage canal behind our house so the pressure wouldn't push the  retaining wall out. When they were cleaning up I asked if they were going to haul all the pieces to the dump. They answered yes so I said "NOOOO!" They were happy to not have to take it to the dump and I was happy to have tons of solid blocking material. Win Win!

  Putting in the first section of new ceiling: I decided to try to keep most of it intact, use rope to hang it from floor joists above, cut it loose with the sawzall, push it up and nail it in at its new height. It worked okay but not as quick as I thought it would so when I got to the next little ceiling bay I removed everything and built anew.

Side note on this part of the job was learning a new Japanese term. Our oldest boy asked me "Dad kubi tsuri?" The boy's always saying stuff I can't understand. I knew "kubi" is neck and "tsuri" is fishing but together? "Ah-ha! No boy I'm not going to do that!" Kubi tsuri is a hanging! He asked if I was going to hang myself when he saw the rope (top right in photo above) that I used to keep the ceiling from crashing down when I cut it loose. In the above shot you can see the one ceiling is framed in at the new height and the other side is still at original height. I also traded the good living room light with the easier to put up and take down one from our bedroom. 

This shot is jumping forward a bit but I also had to use a rope to tie off the AC unit before I ended up deciding to just take it all out.  When working alone one must improvise to keep things from crashing to the floor! Hanging in the background it's tied off to a horizontal 45 degree steal corner brace. I had to sheet the far wall before I could nail up the ceiling ledger.

And I took this one one day when the wife of the house was lying on the sofa as I worked above. Man talk about a hottie it was all I could do to keep my mind on my work! 

This corner of the house before removing the AC unit and taking out the ventilation fan which I really never liked in the first place. I ended up moving the outlets and making a new hole so we can move new AC (per wife's wishes) to where the fan is.

Same corner, ventilation fan and AC unit removed, ready to be blocked and sheeted. Note the diagonal brace in the wall--well over 60 degrees it'd never pass code in California!

Same corner wall after sheeting. One problem I realized after starting was what to do with all the sheetrock I was taking off. Japan being an island country and all it costs ya to take stuff to the dump and it's not like you can just throw out a bunch of sheetrock in the trash. (trash rules are very strict in this land) so I tacked it down on top of ceiling joists and between the studs to keep moisture out and reduce upstairs and/or outside noise. 

Below is me bolting in one of the 45 braces.

The next three shots below is of prepping the 45 braces like I'm putting in in the shot above. It took some time measuring to get notches and bolts right position. Things went much faster after the first one. I cut a 45 angle on a piece of scrap to use as a jig to get the angle right. After notching I put the square washer in to mark for drilling, held it up in place to be sure all fit well and marked for drilling post and beam then put the lug screws in while it was still down on the floor then picked it up and held it up in place again and tightened it down all nice and snug. 

Oh yes, and it was around this time of tightening down lug screws that I found someone (like a little 4 year old girl of the house) had figured out that one yen coins fit perfectly in the socket I was using. I thought I was going batty when I tried to tighten one down and the dang socket wouldn't go on all the way. Finally I looked to see what the heck was going on and Ah-HAA! Remodels and kids. Funny combination! 

Like with any remodel there were little surprises and hurdles to be... err... hurdled, here and there, but day by day progress was slowly made.

Using the around 100 year old chalkline my grandpa used to use when building houses in central California

Checking a 45 degree 4x4 earthquake brace for size and position

Ceiling boards going in, wall sheeted, 45 degree soffit built

One of many recurring trips to Jumbo Encho, D2 or Cainz Home to pick up needful things--bolts and straps, stain and plywood, nails and screws and sandpaper, etc. Oh yeah, and a new drill bit and set of chisels. Woot! 

This is a loft over the barn-like structure of the carpenter who built our home. He's a friend of our neighbor who I decided to go see after pricing the big pieces of cypress lumber that I needed at the home stores and YIKES! It'd have been around 50,000 yen or more ($500) for lumber alone not counting wood to do the ceiling with. So I went to see Mizota san. Super cool guy I placed my order he delivered it along with 4 old dusty boxes of ceiling boards. He gave it to me free; it'd been up there for a few decades and he wasn't going to use it. Alas after nailing in a bunch I opend the third box and Doh! Different color and width. So the shot above this one is me and the younger boy child returning two  boxes for two that matched. We found a match close enough (beggars can't be choosers) all in all the free ceiling boards likely saved me another $300. Oh yeah, and his price for the other lumber was under $150. 

Take that ya overpriced home center bitches! 

My Esse truck! This shot explains why six or eight guys who happened to be in the Jumbo Encho (home center) parking lot at the time I was trying to load two sheets of 3'x6' plywood into my like a car only smaller Japanese transportation unit think Americans are nuts.  HAA!  Two guys came to help, one shaking his head looking at me like I was crazy and another'n tried telling me I couldn't do it. Dude, I'm an American I can do anything! One guy offered to help. I'd measured and knew it could be done heck it's not like it's real 4'x8' sheets of plywood they're Japanese size here, 3'x6'. I was glad for his help in the end though since he helped me get them positioned so I could see out both side windows and the rear view mirror. Still he kept asking "dai jobu?" (no problem?) I wished I could invite him to my country where people haul refrigerators on tops of Ford Pintos and the like! 

So that's the materials gathering report, now back to the remodel...

I noticed the dead space inside the roof over the bay window 

There's room enough for a little cubby I thought!

So now we've got the perfect place for the Hello Kitty newlyweds, Totoro and the Cat Bus, Pepper, Susie and George and God only knows who else will get put up there! 

What better place for a time capsule too! 
Whoever tears down this house will find it?  

Selfie shot holding camera between upstairs floor and downstairs ceiling trying to see if I had the strap straight since not enough room to put my head in there.

I took way too danged many pictures ya know it! The next shots are out of order but still give an idea of progress made by and by

Must stop for lunch! 

Getting ready to plaster the last wall.  Plaster's a pain but I learned a bit while doing it. Like it really does pay to have a mixer and one of those little corner trowels, both of which I'm too much of a tightwad to buy so I improvised by making a corner trowel out of a strong styrofoam sushi box and a mixer out of a long old rusty drill bit jammed into a piece of wood. Hey, it worked! 

Then came finishing up the point where the old ceiling meets the new, all the while worrying my little helper who found the floor-less closet above wasn't going to drop a cordless drill on my head! 

I should mention getting some help clear staining the ceiling boards too

And being kept company by a cool little hae tori gumo (Fly hopping spider) one day

I had to crawl between the floor and ceiling to screw in the final two pieces (top left) to finish up filling in where the old ceiling meets the new. They're screwed into the back of the beam on top and nailed into the joist from living room side on bottom then covered with trim I removed from original ceiling.

Then it was just touching up with stain in a few places and caulking a few others and whala! 

And finding a good place for Bill and Opus

And last but not least, no remodel is complete until...

Home is where the hammock is!