Why a Notch Is Worse Than It Looks
A floor joist works like a beam. The top edge gets squeezed and the bottom edge gets stretched every time you put weight on the floor. That stretching along the bottom is exactly why the bottom edge is the worst possible place to cut. Saw a notch into it and every bit of tension concentrates at the corner of that cut. The wood doesn't fail gradually there. It splits, the way Wendell's joist already had.
Building codes actually allow some cutting, and this surprises people. You can drill holes through the middle of a joist and notch the ends within specific limits. The rules live in the International Residential Code, published by the International Code Council, and they boil down to something like: small holes in the middle third are fine, notches in the middle third of the span are never fine, and nothing gets cut deeper than a fraction of the joist's depth. A plumber who cuts halfway through the bottom of a joist in the middle of its span broke every one of those rules at once.
The frustrating thing is the pipe didn't need to go there. Drop the drain below the framing, drill properly sized holes through the center, reroute two feet over. There were options. Cutting the notch was just the fastest one.
What the Rest of the Crawl Space Told Us
Once you find one shortcut in a flip, you start looking for its friends. Under the kitchen, the new sink drain ran through holes drilled so close to the bottom edge of two joists that maybe an inch of wood remained below them. Functionally those are notches too. And near the water heater, someone had cut a joist completely in half to fit the new supply lines and then "supported" the cut ends with a scrap of 2x4 wedged down to the soil. No footing, no hanger, just a stick standing on dirt.
None of this was visible from inside the house. The floors felt solid. The vinyl plank looked great. That's the thing about flips that I've learned the hard way over 3,500 inspections: the finishes tell you nothing about the work, and sometimes they're specifically there so you won't ask about the work.
I wrote all of it up with photos and recommended a structural engineer take a look before anyone talked repair numbers. Wendell was deflated. He'd been picturing couches, and now he was googling "sistered joist" in my truck.
What the Repair Actually Involved
Here's where the story turns around, because damaged floor framing sounds catastrophic and usually isn't. The engineer's evaluation cost Wendell $650 and took about an hour on site. The fix she specified: sister a full-length 2x8 onto each of the four notched joists with structural screws and construction adhesive, replace the improvised 2x4 post with a proper support on a footing, and add steel reinforcement at the two over-drilled kitchen joists.
Wendell got two bids. One came in at $4,100, the other at $3,400 from a contractor named Marisol who walked the crawl space herself instead of quoting off my photos, which told me plenty about her. The work took her crew a day and a half. Crawl space work is miserable, and that's a chunk of what you're paying for. Nobody sisters a joist for fun in a 30-inch crawl space in July.
The seller, to his credit, didn't fight it. Flippers generally want the deal closed fast, and a documented structural defect with an engineer's letter attached is not something they want to re-disclose to the next buyer if this deal dies. Wendell got a $4,000 credit at closing and used Marisol's crew the week after he moved in.
How This Shows Up in Your Own Report
Inspectors flag framing damage with phrases like "improper notching observed," "joists altered for mechanical runs," or "recommend evaluation by a qualified structural engineer or contractor." What separates a minor note from a serious one is location and depth. A shallow notch near the end of a joist is usually a non-event. A deep cut near the middle of the span, a crack spreading from any notch, or a joist that's been severed entirely deserves an engineer's opinion before you close.
A few honest markers from my side of the flashlight. Bathrooms and kitchens that have been remodeled are where I find this, almost every time, because that's where new pipes chase old framing. Homes with crawl spaces and unfinished basements at least let me see the damage; the same cuts hide behind drywall in finished basements, and no inspector can call what nobody can see. And the fix is routine carpentry, not a foundation project. I've never once seen properly specified sistering fail to solve this.
Wendell's been in the house three years now. He sent me a photo last fall of the crawl space, unprompted, because he'd gone down there to check on things himself before winter. Notched joists turned the guy into somebody who inspects his own crawl space annually. Honestly, there are worse outcomes.