Sorry. That probably sounds like an uber-dramatic headline that ought to be over some long article about the Deep State and dark conspiracies within government.
Maybe another day. Today it refers to nothing more than the Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project, where strange things have begun to happen as we jack up the rear wall.
That all the drywall seams in the bathroom have popped I don’t mind. No surprise there. We were jacking right under the bathroom and such is to be expected. That’s why smart people (i.e. people not me) fix the foundation first.
But the troublesome former porch on the opposite side of the house has suddenly gotten 1/4-inch wider at the top — again. And that is serious business. Those who’ve been around for a while may recall the dramatic adventures that room has caused in the past. Given that it’s only tenuously a part of the same structure as the wing we’re jacking on, such a move is alarming. The reappearance of an old crack in the kitchen plus hints that the laws of physics are altering over the future screen porch … these things worry me.
We made remarkable progress yesterday. Yet the bubble-level says we still have a long way to go. I’m thinking maybe we just stop and call it good, other than some fine adjustments.
I’ll see what The Wandering Monk has to say when he shows up. But I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.
Ouch. I guess we should have seen that coming. Finding a point of “good enough” and sticking with it may be a wise move.
Good luck.
I have a friend who is building a house, he a perfectionist, a bunch of us have a pool for how long it will take him, one friend says he will never be done, I said less than the time Thomas Jefferson spent building Monticello, some times methinks good enough is good enough.
Can’t good enough also be the right way the first time too, depending of course on the definition of good enough?
Oh don’t worry, you can just nail some siding over it to hold it together 😉
Oh, thank you SOOOOOOOO much, LibertyNews. 😉
I’m trying to think of this as a GREAT, BIG, EXCITING, WONDERFUL ADVENTURE.
So far, not quite getting the feeling.
When I showed the Monk what was going on, he agreed with me immediately that we should not jack any higher — just fine-tune floor levels.
It wasn’t so much the amount of damage that convinced him (or me); it was the WTF factor. Neither of us could figure out how or why certain things were happening. So we immediately moved to the stage of placing the permanent posts under the beam that we jacked yesterday, which felt like great progress.
One beam that was replaced a couple of years ago still needs to be jacked up and put on its permanent posts. After that and the rest of the fine tuning, it’s on (next week) to building the new back wall of the bedroom and the floor of the screen porch — which is probably all we’ll try to do before I go off to the icon-painting class.
There will still a lot more to be done on the extended project. Replace missing floor insulation and plastic sheeting. Replace a section of flooring. Frame the screen porch. Replace or repair a bad exterior wall built by Handyman Mike. Side and skirt two-and-a-half walls. Finish leveling the ground for better drainage. Oy, still so much! And so much that’s important for weather protection and rot prevention and therefore must be done ASAP. ASAP-ish, at least. Before fall.
There’s also one more beam to fit into a tricky location. But that one can be done later. And of course there’s tons of finishing work (my job). But some of this can be done as late as fall. We should have the house leveled and closed back up early next week.
Boy, will that feel good.