A Proctor District homeowner noticed a floor drop of nearly an inch near the center of the main living space — sudden enough to feel when walking. This is what structural repair in Tacoma looks like when the failure involves compromised load-bearing posts, floor joist deflection, and a drainage problem that had been feeding moisture into the crawl space for years.
The owner had noticed soft spots in the living room floor for about a year — gradual enough to dismiss as settling. Then over a single wet winter, a section near the center beam dropped noticeably. Doors in the adjacent hallway began sticking. Another contractor told him it was "probably just the foundation" and quoted a concrete repair that turned out to be irrelevant.
Tacoma's Craftsman-era housing stock — much of it built 1905–1930 — uses a common post-and-beam crawl space structure. Wood posts bear directly on concrete piers or pads at grade. When those posts hold moisture for years, decay starts at the base and works upward. The beam or girder they support begins to deflect, and the floor system above follows. This is not a foundation problem. It is a structural repair problem — and it is completely fixable.
Full crawl space entry with moisture meter readings, visual post inspection, and load-path tracing from floor to beam to post to pad. Four posts along the center girder line showed active decay at their bases — two had lost more than 40% of their cross-section. The girder above showed 1.5 inches of sag at mid-span. Floor joists in the affected bay were deflecting well beyond acceptable limits.
Crawl space moisture readings were elevated across the entire west side — 24–31% MC at post bases. Exterior inspection revealed a collapsed perimeter drain at the west foundation that had been directing surface runoff under the house for at least two seasons. The crawl space floor was visibly damp. Vapor barrier had degraded. This was not a framing problem caused by a one-time event — it was a slow-feed moisture problem that had been running for years.
Two of the four compromised posts were carrying live load with insufficient remaining section. Temporary screw-jack shoring was installed under the center girder during the diagnostic visit to arrest further deflection before the owner's family slept in the house that night. No additional charge — this is included in the diagnostic when life-safety conditions exist.
Structural repair in Tacoma's older housing stock requires understanding how the original framing system was designed to work — and what it needs to work correctly for another century. This job involved four discrete scopes that had to be sequenced correctly: drainage correction first, then post replacement, then joist repair, then floor leveling.
Total repair time: 11 working days from diagnostic to final walkthrough. The floor drop was fully corrected — post-repair measurement showed less than 3/16" variation across the entire living room floor. The sticking doors opened freely again within two days of re-leveling as the framing relaxed to its corrected position.
The drainage correction — the step most contractors skip entirely — eliminated the moisture feed that caused the failure. Without correcting the perimeter drain, replacement posts would have repeated the same decay cycle within 5–8 years. The owner received a written explanation of what to monitor annually.
Total project value: $18,200 lump sum. Five-year written structural guarantee on all replaced framing. Diagnostic fee of $350 credited in full.
Every month of moisture exposure advances the decay further. A $350 diagnostic tells you what you have, what's causing it, and exactly what it costs to fix permanently — including whether it needs shoring today.
253-891-9622