[greencanoe]

What would you do?
I have a balloon framed house that has no sill plate, or rim joist. It would appear that the 8" floor joists were arranged over the width of the house directly on the foundation wall, (no gasket,) 16" on center, separated with a squash blocks only on the ends at the exterior walls, with two wooden beams in the middle of the span, (half lapped end to end over a screw jack post, to act as a single supporting member, pocketed in the foundation walls,) and to make things interesting, I have discovered that there is no header over the basement windows, to carry the two stories above. Compound this with soil erosion against the house, and we have rotten structure that needs to be replaced. I plan on sistering the existing joists, but need to be able to tie the ends together, at least over the windows with some kind of header. There is not enough room above the basement windows to install a beam, so I was thinking of how I could cut back the joists and sister them evenly to allow for joist hangers attaching to a new doubled up rim joist. Since the basement is unfinnished, I had also contemplated framing tight to the underside of each joist to act as a point load.