Structural Repairs & Structural Carpentry in Chicago

Case Study

Foundation Wall Reinforcement Before a Home Sale

A homeowner in the Chicago suburbs had lived in his house for more than thirty years. He was the original owner and was preparing to sell the house and retire when a serious foundation problem came to light.

The basement walls were moving inward. The problem traced back to the way the foundation had been built in the 1980s.

For the homeowner, the timing could hardly have been worse. A major structural defect discovered before a sale can mean a delayed listing, difficult negotiations with buyers, or a substantial loss in value.

Michael Cook assessed the foundation and designed a repair around the house that existed rather than defaulting to a much larger reconstruction. His solution called for 22 custom steel reinforcement brackets.

Cook brought Paro Projects onto the job to execute the design.

Through our network of Chicago-area tradespeople and fabricators, we found a local metal shop that could manufacture the brackets within the week. Once they were ready, Paro Projects installed the complete reinforcement system over the course of a few days.

The installation passed inspection, and the homeowner was able to move ahead with the sale without waiting through a major foundation reconstruction. Instead of entering the market with an unresolved structural defect, he could show buyers an engineer-designed, inspected structural improvement.

The cost of the repair was small compared with the value it protected.

This is the kind of structural work we like.

A problem that looked capable of derailing someone's plans became a defined engineering problem, a set of drawings, 22 pieces of steel and a few days of work.

Good structural work combines engineering with practical knowledge of how buildings are put together. In Chicago, it also helps to know the old housing stock, the local trades and fabricators, and who to call when a custom piece of steel needs to exist by next week.

There is no benefit to adding fear, hype or unnecessary work to the equation. We would rather understand the problem, build what the engineer specifies, and let you get on with your house.

Case Study

Leveling Severely Sloping Floors in an 1890s Rogers Park Worker’s Cottage

The clients had recently purchased an 1890s worker’s cottage in Rogers Park and were undertaking a full gut renovation. Upstairs, the floors sloped so dramatically that the bedroom doors would no longer close.

The first question with a sloping floor in an old Chicago house is always: Why?

So we brought in our structural engineer, Michael Cook of Spring Line Engineering.

His assessment, delivered with good humor, was: “We don’t know.”

That was not as alarming as it sounds.

The second-floor joists ran in one long span through much of the house — farther than we would expect contemporary dimensional lumber to span without additional support. But these were old-growth floor joists, and there was no clear evidence that the wood itself was failing.

The house was also more than 130 years old. Like many Chicago worker’s cottages, it had settled, shifted and been altered in ways we could only reconstruct in pieces.

Chicago’s nineteenth-century houses were built during a period of enormous growth, often by skilled carpenters and tradespeople working with old-growth lumber from the forests around the Great Lakes. The result is a housing stock that can be remarkably durable and, from time to time, structurally puzzling.

First, we tried the obvious solution.

Because this was a full renovation, we were already installing engineered headers on the first floor to create new openings and change the layout. Working with Cook, we added support beneath the low area of the second floor and raised it a small amount to see how the floor would respond.

It didn’t.

The floor remained crooked.

We checked it, laughed, ate lunch and reconsidered the problem.

This is part of working on old houses. Engineering matters, but a 130-year-old building is also the accumulated result of original construction, decades of settling, previous renovations and decisions made by people whose reasoning is no longer available to us.

Once Cook had established that the floor structure was sound, the question became much simpler:

How do we give the homeowner reasonably level floors?

A Carpenter, a Pile of 2x4s, and a Better Idea

After lunch, one of our favorite carpenters, Jim Dorling, came back upstairs with a solution.

Rather than forcing the old structure into a position it had not occupied in generations, we could correct the finished floor from above.

Jim measured the slope across each room, worked out the change in elevation and ripped a series of 2x4s into long, tapered shims. Each shim compensated for the floor beneath it.

We installed the shims over the existing structure and laid a new subfloor on top.

Both bedrooms now had reasonably level floors, and the doors could close.

Because the rooms began at different elevations, leveling them independently left one bedroom slightly higher than the other. We designed a simple wood threshold between them so the transition felt intentional and belonged in the house.

No attempt to jack a 130-year-old house back into theoretical perfection. No unnecessary reconstruction.

The structure had been evaluated by an engineer. The floor joists were sound. The clients needed safe, comfortable floors that worked.

So that is what we built.

Fixing Uneven and Sloping Floors in an Old Chicago House

Sloping or sagging floors can come from foundation movement, damaged or undersized floor joists, long spans, removed load-bearing walls, water damage, previous renovations, or several conditions at once.

Sometimes a crooked floor is evidence of a structural problem. Sometimes it is the record of a house settling into itself over a century.

You have to know which one you are dealing with before deciding how to fix it.

For this Rogers Park house, the right solution came from structural engineering, experience with old Chicago houses and resourceful carpentry. The clients got reasonably level bedroom floors and peace of mind without paying us to solve a structural problem they didn’t have.