Do it yourself

Well- the live and dead and in between loads have been calculated and I inserted in a 4x8x 5' beam into my stud-cutout (after supporting the house with 8 each 4x4's for safety..) Lo and behold== nothing came crashing down and my telltale tape, after 3 days, tacked next to the beam, shows a whopping goose egg for deflection!! --0-- **0** nada nothing. zilch!! zip!! Maybe casue I added a 33% safety margin in my load calcs! Thanks for the thoughts everyone.. I am now the proud over of a 4' x 6' *huge* crawlspace/soon-to-be my new partial basemetn workshop! Adding about 200 useable sq feet to the house.. the washer and dryer go out here.. the snowblower, shovels, workbenchs.. One Happy Camper! Rich and thank you for the hearty laugh you provided when i got home, had kids toss tantrums during a delicious meal of lentil soup... then i got to chuckle with the group of DIYers and The Blonde...