help with shutters hammock and hanging a bed in hicks home (mattress, houses)

[nanigodsmum]

i live in hawaii in a single wall construction redwood house built in 76.(hicks home)I want to know if i made board and battan shutters would i be able to hang them as working shutters,,I am referring to hanging them on the outside window casing and the weight of them on single wall construction. I would use pine and paint as heartwood redwood if available i am sure would be costly..Thank you for the help!!Also before i forget i also need to know if anyone knows if one can hang a hammock in these homes and if so what supports them..And #3 i love the pictures i have seen of hanging beds.Meaning making a pine frame queen size with mattress and hanging from ceiling.Would this be at all possible with the little wood holding up the roof?? and #4 can i lay ceramic tile on the hardwood (no subfloor) 3/4 inch woodfloor without laying done anything? it squeeks very little and only under certain small spots but am concerned with the weight..I thank you ahead of time as i have a lot of questions

[Kayekaye]

I've stayed in those homes, and I think anything you attach to the outside the bolts would show on the inside. So maybe putting another 2x4 or board next to the window, all the way from the floor to the ceiling, to hold the screws might work. The hanging stuff, I don't know, it seems dicey.

[hotzcatz]

It's a no go on the hanging hammock or bed. There isn't anything up there to support the weight, especially a point load type weight such as hammock attachment points. The original ceilings in a Hicks Home of that era were "canec" which didn't weigh much. Canec is sugar cane bagass (cane stalks after the juice is squished out) mixed with arsenic, smashed flat and dried. Which isn't as much of a health hazard as you'd expect since the arsenic is usually encapsulated in paint and not chewed on by teething kids or anything. Since the canec ceilings didn't weigh much, the roof trusses were usually quite small. Especially by today's standards. Your roof trusses are probably 2" x 4" or 2" x 6" trusses spaced at four feet on center with 2" x 2" blocking at 2' o.c. Translate that into "ceiling framing that can't hold up much".

If you built a frame supported by the floor, you could probably have a suspended bed or hammock. Kinda like a four poster type bed with a hanging mattress or hammock in the middle.

Generally Hick's Homes had pretty big windows. Usually the window frames are redwood or fir. Which is a soft wood and wouldn't support a point load like a big window shutter hinge. If the shutters were only on the smaller windows and the outer edge of the shutter was supported, then you might be able to get it to work. Getting a working shutter for the big picture window might be problematical.

Your floor should be oak, though, isn't it? Why add ceramic tiles? Although they did put vinyl or linoleum tiles in the kitchens and baths of Hick's Homes. Typically, the large ceramic tiles will crack unless they have an underlayment when they're put on a 3/4" wood floor.

Do you know which model of Hick's Home you have?

[nanigodsmum]

Originally Posted by hotzcatz

It's a no go on the hanging hammock or bed. There isn't anything up there to support the weight, especially a point load type weight such as hammock attachment points. The original ceilings in a Hicks Home of that era were "canec" which didn't weigh much. Canec is sugar cane bagass (cane stalks after the juice is squished out) mixed with arsenic, smashed flat and dried. Which isn't as much of a health hazard as you'd expect since the arsenic is usually encapsulated in paint and not chewed on by teething kids or anything. Since the canec ceilings didn't weigh much, the roof trusses were usually quite small. Especially by today's standards. Your roof trusses are probably 2" x 4" or 2" x 6" trusses spaced at four feet on center with 2" x 2" blocking at 2' o.c. Translate that into "ceiling framing that can't hold up much".

If you built a frame supported by the floor, you could probably have a suspended bed or hammock. Kinda like a four poster type bed with a hanging mattress or hammock in the middle.

Generally Hick's Homes had pretty big windows. Usually the window frames are redwood or fir. Which is a soft wood and wouldn't support a point load like a big window shutter hinge. If the shutters were only on the smaller windows and the outer edge of the shutter was supported, then you might be able to get it to work. Getting a working shutter for the big picture window might be problematical.

Your floor should be oak, though, isn't it? Why add ceramic tiles? Although they did put vinyl or linoleum tiles in the kitchens and baths of Hick's Homes. Typically, the large ceramic tiles will crack unless they have an underlayment when they're put on a 3/4" wood floor.

Do you know which model of Hick's Home you have?

I use the term "hicks home" loosely . I do not believe I have an actual hicks home but a single wall construction home built in 1976. I also do not have big windows. Thank you for your help in my problem .

[hotzcatz]

Aloha Nanigodsmum,

Wow, it's been awhile since the original post. How did your projects go? Did you find a way to make them work?

Hicks Homes were some of the major builders of single wall homes in Hawaii, so it may be a true Hicks home. They built them from the late fifies/early sixties and I think they're still building houses today, although I'm not sure when they started doing more double wall. Shootz, maybe they're still doing single wall. Folks can still build single wall if they do it more as a post-n-beam type of construction than as a true single wall.

But, other than Hicks, there were a lot of other folks building single wall houses. Most of the plantation camps built single wall. We have three single wall houses and only one of them was built by Hicks. They did a nice job.