You walk into a pre-1920s build, look up, and see gorgeous, hand-hewn old-growth beams without a single knot in sight. It’s easy to assume the whole place was built like a fortress, but that’s the trap. Old-school carpenters were masters of timber joinery, but when it came to footings, they routinely cut corners and threw whatever was lying around into the dirt. First thing you do on these old remodels: ignore the beautiful framing and crawl underneath immediatly. Dig down around the base of every main post with a long screwdriver to see what’s acutally carrying the load. I’ve lost count of how many massive 8x8 posts I've found balancing on rotting cedar stumps or loose river rock that turned to dust decades ago. Before you even think about leveling floors or touching the structure above, set up temporary bottle jacks and heavy cribbing on wide sill pads. Take the load off those makeshift footers, dig down below your local frost depth, and pour modern concrete piers. Get the building on real legs first, then you can admire the woodwork.
Tips for inspecting century homes that nobody talks about
Oct 05, 2026
Last reply: 15 hours ago
3 Replies
Follow replies to this discussion?
Ran into this exact situation on a 1912 foursquare last spring. The central beam was a massive 8x10 white oak that looked pristine from the cellar stairs, but the middle post was sitting on flat river stones resting directly in damp dirt. Poked around the base with a long masonry bit and the bottom four inches of the post disintegrated into wet sawdust. We rented two 20-ton Norco bottle jacks and set up 6x6 cribbing on doubled-up 3/4-inch plywood pads to spread the footprint across the dirt floor. The part that caught me off guard was digging depth in tight quarters. Hand-digging three 36-inch deep holes for 12-inch Sonotubes when you only have about 32 inches of crawl clearance was brutal work with a mini trenching shovel and five-gallon buckets.
One thing I'd add to your approach: go dead slow when taking the weight off. I only raised the beam about 3/16 of an inch just to free the old post, and even that tiny lift bound up two interior doors on the first floor and cracked plaster in the hallway. The framing had settled into that sag over a century, so jacking it requires a ton of patience before you pour your pads and bolt down the new Simpson post bases.
Spot on, but one detail folks often overlook when setting up those jacks is checking for old cast iron plumbing stacks or rigid gas lines strapped right to the framing. Even that tiny 3/16-inch lift is enough to shear a rusted hub or pop an old threaded joint in the ceiling above. I always loosen pipe hangers and give the main lines some play before touching the jacks, or you end up trading a sagging beam for sewer gas in the walls.
Getting the concrete in was the killer part for me on my 1918 bungalow. Hauling 80-pound bags down the cellar hatch sucked, so I built a quick chute out of scrap 2x8s lined with poly right thru a basement window. Mixed two bags at a time outside in a wheelbarrow, then shoveled it right down the chute into 5-gallon buckets staged below. Cut our pour time in half and saved my back. Just be sure to lay a tarp under your work area down there—dropping wet mix into dry dirt creates an ungodly mess to clean up later.
Join the Discussion
Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.
Didn't find your answer?
Ask the community — no account required