Last week’s foundation work turned largely into discussions about how to proceed (after discovering that the light at the end of the construction tunnel was an onrushing train). Today the Wandering Monk arrived bright and early to get down to real, physical work again.
That is, he arrived 20 minutes past our agreed-upon bright-and-early start time, desperately clutching a cup of coffee. But we (mostly he) got right down to it and so far, so good.
The NW corner of the house is now supported by nothing. Or rather, the nothing that was previously supporting it has been removed, waterlogged and rotten, replaced temporarily by jacks and 4×4 or 6×6 posts on concrete piers.
Good darned thing your contributions to last summer’s foundation fundraiser also included help for fixing drainage on the property. It’s amazing how saturated with moisture even the non-rotted parts of that corner were. (We still have more work to do in sloping the ground away from the house on the west side, but it’s nothing compared with the monumental earth-moving and retaining-wall project of last fall, which you’ll be glad to hear turned out great, both aesthetically and drainagewise.)
Even though I know the Monk is still nervous about the jacking and other under-house work, he’s feeling better enough about the whole business to put on a little display for the blog:
The teardown for the future screen porch has officially begun.
Later this week he’ll bring in an official minion to help form and pour concrete pads and to assist with dragging the bulk of the heavy ground-contact* 6×6 beams under the house. I can’t tell you how relieved I’ll be to be relieved of that particular job.
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*No, the beams won’t be on the ground. They’ll be on posts, which will be on poured concrete pads. We just got ground-contact treated lumber for everything under the house. We wanted to ensure that a mess like this doesn’t happen again.
Nice hat.
Yow. That picture shows the rot much more than the previous ones. Oh, Lord, that’s a job.
jed — Yep, there’s tons of rot! But that corner isn’t exactly typical. Actually, most of that wall (which we are removing) is pretty sound. But for some reason, that corner was left exposed after someone’s botched work from way back. (The foundation had begun to sag and instead of fixing it, somebody just opened that wall and stuck a 4×4 support post in there.) I stapled heavy plastic over the gap shortly after moving here, but by then the damage was long done.
But definitely the foundation in that corner and for six or seven feet along the walls in both directions was just gone, gone, gone. And was gone a very long time ago.
I’m glad I bought this place. But I swear, after this monster project is done, I don’t ever want to see another act of rot tearout. Not. Ever.