An attic floor is not always a floor

Converting an attic into a usable space is one of the most common ways that we can build some equity into our homes, right? And we can get those great unique spaces out of those homes that we love. But you got to do it carefully because attics, the ceiling ties that make up the floor for an attic, they're actually just meant to hold tension or maybe three to five pounds per square foot, which is almost nothing. Just the weight of the ceiling. It's one of the most common problems that I see is that people have expanded up into their attic. They have covered over it with drywall and a nice floor system. And now the floor is bouncing. So and that's a problem. They're using ceiling ties instead of floor joists. But to an untrained eye, they look the same. What's the difference between a two by four at two feet on center or a two by six at 12 inches on center? And that's the difference between holding the floor up and all that activity or not. The floor, that bounciness, that's the building trying to report on what's underneath it and that there's a new use there and that new use needs some engineering. One of the cases, sometimes people don't even realize that they have the problem that they have. Had a new buyer, right? He had just gotten his new home. And I came out there because he wanted to remove a basement wall in the house that he had just bought. So we went downstairs and we talked about that. And then as we were standing in the living room and wrapping things up, I noticed that there was a beam above us that had been sistered multiple times. That maybe you have like a four by six beam, a six inch deep by four inch wide beam. And then they've taken two by sixes and two by sixes and they keep nailing them to him. And I'm like, you know, did you guys do this? You know, what's going on here? And they say, yeah, the third floor is really bouncy. And so we went upstairs and it's gorgeous. Whoever did the work is excellent workmanship. But it was very clearly an attic space that had been converted. And we could see that it was just two by fours spanning maybe 12 feet, which is a long way for a two by four. I mean, if you had a two by four, would you put it on? Would you put it on a brick, 12 feet apart from each other and then try to walk on it? You can't. I mean, you can't do it. Yeah. So they bought a house thinking it was like two and a half or three floors and really it wasn't. So they needed to essentially build a new floor underneath their bouncy floor. But it's very common and it actually wasn't a very hard fix. So what we did was we used engineered wood and engineered two by four. And they slid it in between the existing two by four so that they could save that head room. And luckily they were doing renovations on the house, throughout the house. So it wasn't it wasn't too costly of a fix either.