It's a very enlightening experience when you tear out all of the walls and ceilings from a home that you know for a fact has had some major construction done inside over the course of close to 115 years.
Enlightening as in, now we can clearly see why all of the problems we've had with the home since we purchased it almost 5 years ago are actually happening and also the ones we've seen visible signs of when we bought the house, what the underlying causes of are.
We've always known the kitchen was added on, and a wall or two was taken out to make it. What we didn't know was that the second floor of the home was never intended as living space. We've found where the original framed out doorway to the back bedroom that became the kitchen was blocked off in order to put in a set of stairs to the attic space when the owners of our home at the time decided to make attic space living space (to still get access to the new kitchen area, they carved out a doorway into the side of the existing closet so you could walk through and gave it an arch to match the arch going into the hallway (though, nowhere near as good craftsmanship), and then they took the closet door off its hinges to open into the new found mini hallway).
The end result? We've got ceiling joists on the first floor that then suddenly became floor joists for the brand new second floor. The problem? The ceiling joists were never intended to support the load.
What does that mean to us? Well, there's an inch gap between joists and floor above in spots where the joists have sagged. We have 2"x6" ceiling joists that run 19'. According to current building codes, they are overextended about 5' too far for ceiling joists. What about the fact that they reclaimed the attic space as living space and now the ceiling joists now pull double duty as floor joists? According to current building codes, they are currently overextended about 9' too far.
Suddenly, things are starting to make sense. That's probably why that's the ceiling that fell in while Tabitha was at home in the room doing homework back in 2004. Plaster isn't known for it's flexibility.
So, the framers have stopped work on the second floor and roof, and work has switched to try and fix the structural integrity of the house. We'll lose more than a few inches of ceiling height in the process, but we don't have a choice if we want the house to pass inspection. We are also happy to oblige, given that it will prevent us from one day crashing into the first floor from the second floor when we actually started using the upstairs (it was currently used mostly for storage) and putting some real furniture up there.
This little insight instigated a full investigation of the entire house, and there are apparently problems ad nauseum in the cellar such as floor joists hidden behind crawl space that aren't adequate to support the load of the house, and with the previous back few rooms of the house being consolidated into one large room for a kitchen, nothing down there is up to code for how that room is now being used (to support heavy appliances). Oh, and apparently, the entire roof is mostly resting on a series 1"x6" boards that run the entire outside span of the house, rather than being supported by the walls. All of the people working have been commenting that they are surprised we've not had major problems with the roof prior, since there are plenty of spots where the 1"x6" boards are sagging from the weight of the roof, and some that have even started cracking.
Needless to say, all of these problems are going to be fixed. Though, right now, on our dime, since none of it was included in the insurance estimate to repair the damage due to the fire. The current financial market crisis isn't affecting us at the moment as much as it would have, as we cashed out weeks ago (for these new items and all the insurance work as well, since we are still waiting on the insurance check, and we refused to let the house sit as it was right after the fire and started work immediately, flipping the bills ourselves).
Oddly enough, all of these problems we would have mostly been oblivious to until something serious happened. I guess we should be thankful for the fire, in a way, as it's allowing us the opportunity to basically re-engineer the internal framework of the entire house to ensure that it will be around for much longer than it may have. We've been rolling the dice every day without ever realizing we were playing.
I guess they actually have building codes for a reason. Too bad none were used when our home was originally built.