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…
Category: Home improvement
The Wandering Monk and I haven’t accomplished much on the physical part of the newly re-christened Great Foundation and Screen Porch Project this week. Some teardown; the back end of the bedroom has no floor and we’ve uncovered enough crumbling, cracked, rotted, bug-eaten, twisted, misplaced, poorly thought-out beams, joists, and posts to know we had to rethink the project. And thinking is what we’ve done. Tuesday after realizing how screwed the foundation was we must have spent nearly three hours talking about how to cope. I know we both worried about it overnight. On Wednesday we talked a couple of…
“Dark night of the soul” is too serious a term for this week’s mini-crisis. That’s an expression to reserve for the big bad moments (or years) in life. But this week fell at least into a momentary twilight of the creative soul. Then … light! —– Tuesday the Wandering Monk and I found all that awfulness as we began the Great House Foundation Project. Not unexpected. Dismal nevertheless. The Monk immediately began kludging together a plan for jacking up the house even with very little of the house left to jack. His plan was creative. And intelligent. And it removed…
The brain isn’t working today. I blame the house foundation. The Monk, however, has his system figured out, with only mild consultation from me (which mostly involved me asking, “Why aren’t you doing XYZ?” and him explaining quite logically why something that made perfect sense in my mind actually wouldn’t work as well as what he’d already figured out). At least I was able to come up with the average psf weight of a house for leveraging purposes. My major contribution for the day. Once the lumberyard delivers beam-and-joist materials this afternoon, my major contribution will be banging nails and/or…
I wasn’t sure how much the Big, Scary Foundation Project would affect my blogging. Unfortunately — for the next week or so, at least — it’s going to affect it a lot. After the many serious problems we uncovered today I’m going to be totally preoccupied with the safety and success of every step we take. I trust the Wandering Monk and his smarts, but we’re both in territory where we’ve never gone before. I won’t be thinking about much else besides how to get past that dreadful mess. And I won’t be surfing the ‘Net or participating in many…
So. This morning we went outside to tear away siding and general rubble at the base of the house to get an idea how bad the beams and joists of the bedroom floor were. The Wandering Monk was hammering and prying away and the bottom of the west wall. I was hammering and prying away at the bottom of the north wall. This wasn’t a particularly tough job because … well, there wasn’t much solid wood to pry at. That’s the north-wall foundation beam, such as it is, bending, cracking, and diving deep into the earth. Those are floor joists…
… it begins with tearing out the ceilings. Because once this monster project is done, I want only building, creating type work to remain in the bedroom. No more giant trash heaps. So the Monk has been tearing out the old, water-damaged fiber ceiling. First, down came the 12×12″ tiles. He pried. I scurried at the bottom of the ladder, bagging up the remains. Then he went back for a second pass, prying off the larger sheets of fiber that were behind the tiles. These sheets were covered with paper that had become brittle and fragile over the decades. Messy…
Monday. That’s the day the long-awaited (and long-dreaded) foundation project commences. The Wandering Monk and I had hoped to start in April, but it’s been far too cold and wet. It’s still cold, but we’re headed into a drier period, so here we go. This weekend I’m schlepping the last movable stuff out of the back end of the house. We’re going to be tearing up sections of the floor, then replacing beams and jacking the house up from within, so it all has to go. (There is simply not enough ground clearance for anyone but a masochist or a…