Hello everyone. I am looking for some re-assurance or guidance with this issue. I own a 100 year old 2 story home. We originally had a contractor over to the house because we had noticed gaps in our 2 year old hard wood floors. We figured it was because of sagging floors (just found out its from the loss of humidity from the extreme winter cold in Buffalo). While the contractor was down in our basement he noticed a large crack in very large support beam which supports floor joists which have been notched out to fit over it. He said that very old wood dries and cracks but was not sure of the severity of the crack and that he would send some pics to an architect he uses. I attached a couple pics of the beam. The architect came back with the suggestion that the problem needs to be addressed by reinforcing the beam using bolts and metal plates at the beam and floor between a support post. My worry is that the crack does not warrant that much of a fix, and it is a money grab but of course I have not background in this. Also, I noticed that one of the floor joists has a large crack as well. It seems the joist directly next to it had the same issue and was repaired as shown in the attached photos. Do you think that joists needs the same repair? This joist seems more of an issue to me than the beam, but again I have no background in this. The contractor did not even notice that joist, I just did while down looking at the beam again. I would appreciate any comments on either issue. Thanks so much. -Greg

Hi, 13 years ago, I moved in a cottage that was built around 1979. On the 2nd floor, we have a guest bedroom that still had original wall to wall carpet. This room gets little use and no improvements were performed since then. I recently emptied the room for what I thought was a weekend project; removing carpet and laying laminate floating floor. As soon as the furniture was out of the way, we felt going up when walking the last third of the room. Subfloor is 3/4" plywood nailed to 2x10 floor joists. The room is about 12 x 13. Using a circular saw, I removed about 2/3 of the subfloor, here's what I found: The first 7 floor joist are level to each other, but the last 3 joist (including last one that's under the outside wall), while also level to themselves, are almost a full inch higher, hence the title of my post. I don't know if such a big difference in plane could be caused by crown up/down mistake, but I now think it is not a concidence this room was carpeted, while most of the house was hardwood floored. So, the last third of the room is higher than the rest. If I bring up the lower 2/3 of the room, it will create a one inch step entering the room, not to mention extra work for entry and closet door. It seems more logical to bring down the high third of the room, but I am puzzled as how I'll manage, considering the last joist in the high part is under the outside wall. One idea would be to reinstall the high portion of the subfloor flush to the joist, instead of above it like rest of room. Anyone ever done something like this?