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Trying to fix a sagging header on an old house in Atlanta took me a whole weekend
I got called out to look at a front door that wouldn't close right in a 1920s bungalow. The homeowner thought it was just the hinges, but the real problem was the header above the door frame had sagged almost an inch over the decades. I figured I could sister in a new LVL beam and jack it up in a few hours. Wrong. The old framing was a mess of notched studs and weird blocking, so I couldn't get a clean lift without risking cracking the plaster ceiling inside. I ended up having to open up a small section of the exterior siding to get a proper temporary support wall built, then slowly crank the jack over two days to avoid more damage. What I thought was a half-day fix turned into 16 hours of work across Saturday and Sunday. Anyone have a better method for lifting a header without opening walls when you're dealing with plaster and lathe?
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avery_flores171mo agoTop Commenter
Sixteen hours just to fix a door header is brutal. I can't believe the sag was a whole inch, that's a huge amount for something like that. Did the plaster inside crack at all while you were jacking it up?
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blair_taylor321mo ago
Yeah that inch of sag is wild. You gotta go super slow with the jack, like a quarter turn every hour, to save the plaster.
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