Once a tree across the street from me was broken about four inches from the ground. Considering it wasn't my tree and it wasn't completely snapped in two, I went out with my cordless drill and some drywall screws and screwed it back together. The tree lived and eventually covered the screws only to succumb to verticillium wilt during a dry spell a few years later. Now this was a 2 inch thick Autumn Blaze maple (red x silver), so if any tree were to survive such an ordeal, that would be it. However I'd probably attempt the same or similar (duct tape, nails, rope, etc) fix again in the future if the situation came up.

Thanks for your suggestions. I noticed the difference between the summer and winter with the floor. Its ashame as they are very nice looking. My wife and I are just fed up as we cant even go in the babies room without waking him up from the noise. YES, its that bad. We put a little rug in his room to try to damper the sound, but only helped a little. Floorguy, I tried with the screws underneath (probably about 100 of them or so) but didn't help. If I recall correctly, I used 1 1/2 inch screws. Maybe they weren't long enough? My arm was ready to fall off from holding the screw gun in an upwards position! I did try putting some shims where I saw that the sub floor was loose, but overall, the sub floor is pretty flat against the joists. As the contractors said, they basically didn't use any any nails when they were installed. If I look underneath them from the basement, I would probably count maybe 50 nails sticking out from the sub floor for the entire 1st floor. I don't know...... :-/ If you can remember the screw names, PLEASE let me know! :-) Any other suggestions or advice is appreciated. Thanks all!

I agree with dooer's comment, but if that is not an option I would buy some quality deck screws, grab my screw gun and start fastening the deck properly at all critical structural points- joists to house/face plates, posts, etc. If the contractor nailed the top decking down that ads insult to injury on top of using nails (and especially interior nails). If the top decking was nailed down I would strongly consider adding at least a single screw per top-board and joist intersection. It is hard to believe that so many contractors looking to shave time/$ can build decks with improper nails and other amazingly improper and poor workmanship methods and pass inspection. I just finished rebuilding our 10 year old deck after the nails started pulling out which caused the stair case and floor to come apart and sag, railing and spindles coming loose from the deck frame, etc. Whoever built your and my deck is an absolute disgrace to the building profession and should not be allowed to continue to build anything for anyone without undergoing some serious retraining and monitoring of workmanship quality...

Here's a close-up. The nails are 6" apart, in between the little metal dots. The instructions say to nail on the little dots, but when I tried it by hand, the dot collapsed and looked bad, and it was too hard to line the brad nailer up with the dot. Our tin is a metallic finish (Antique Satin Nickel), so the nails blend better. If i were doing a color, especially white, I would plan on touching up the nails with matching paint. Other advice: You have to plan carefully, measure carefully, and snap chalklines to work to. Our ceiling turned out to be exactly the right size for the tin panels plus the crown molding. That's both good and bad; I didn't have more than 1/4" to play with. If you notice, the center tile is different, and had to be exactly centered for everything to come out right. You can cheat a bit with the overlap to make corrections, but it's easy to accidentally mess it up, too. It's very hard to remove a panel without damaging it! I bought one extra panel, but didn't use it. I should have bought more crown molding, as it is tricky to get the miters right- lots of trial-and-error there. We are beyond thrilled with the finished product, and it never fails to get a big reaction from guests when they see it. The galvanized ceiling fan really works well with the overall look.