Death to the Old Foundation!

We're finally (finally! finally!) finished bashing down all the old concrete and dragging it out back. We have a big pile of rubble now, if anyone knows anyone who wants rubble. (We might know one guy, actually.) While most of the foundation was a simple two-foot deep red brick setup (very bad after a century without gutters), and part of it was crawl space, somebody had retrofitted at least a portion of the crawl space under the house with a basement of poured concrete walls. It was in very bad shape though and had to go. Smashy smashy!

We've dug out nearly all we need to below the sills so the front left third of the house is floating on its cribs and I-beams above the site.

Before:

After:

That's a lot of dirt!

For our next trick, we'll dig out the trenches that the foundation footer will be poured into. We hope to have the cement truck here and do the pour on the 14th. Depends on the rain... Here's the plan (pictures were taken around June 6 when we did the pour for the back third of the house.)

Lifting the House...sort of.

It came!!! My new USB connector for the digital camera! Yay! So I can finally post all my pictures of what's been going on at the house for the last month and a half. Basically...lots. We're deep enough into the demolition and digging that we've taken security precautions.

I have a deep fear of a neighbor falling into the hole...some of our neighbors have questionable standards of living/safety...

Since finishing the sills about a month ago, we've been digging out the area under the dining room and living room and Shawn's built up the cribbing to hold the I-beams in place. Here are some pictures of our digging progress for the past few weeks. The cribs are built from railroad ties (3 foot - 4 foot sections) and the I-beams are being "rented" from a salvage yard near Greenwood. We bought them but intend on selling them back for about 80% of the cost.

This process seems to be the standard method of house-lifting out there. The folks at Geekazon used it, as did Brothers Builders in Ontario. It was recommended, of course, by our hero, George Nash, and done by the Hinton family in the wonderful documentary Moving Midway. What the Hinton's did was much more complex, as they were transporting a 155 year old preservation-quality plantation house to a new location, while we're justing holding a 105 year old busted farmhouse in the air to build under it. But the concept remains the same. I never would have guessed....

Shawn also had to bust up and remove our front 'porch,' a piece of poured concrete about 2 feet thick. This was done mostly while I was at inservice days and during my first week of school.

We may be able to do our second footer pour next weekend, depending on how bad the rainy season and when we can get the cement truck to visit. We'll see.

Heigh-ho! Digging....again.

"We dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig in a mine the whole day through!

To dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig, dig is what we like to do."

Yes, it's that time again. Time to dig... and dig... and dig. I can hear Shawn picking away underneath me as I write. He got a nail in his foot early last week, poor guy, so we "pre-poned" this week's trip to Venango County, PA. We went last weekend to spend time with his family. (Hi, all!)

We came back early this week, took a little time off for the foot, and now we're back to digging. I'm still in the unfortunate camera situation of not having a USB cord, but I finally broke down and ebayed one for just under $3. I'll have more pictures up soon, I promise.

I also think I should buy my own digital camera (like a big girl) and stop borrowing my mama's. This month's Consumer Reports speaks very well of a $130-$150 Canon A1000. The price looked right so I froogled it... Wouldn'tcha know, all the better priced models were sold out. Guess I'm not the only person who does whatever C.R. tells me to.

Here are some early digging photos though so you have an idea of where we are:

If you stood in the spot the photographer is in today, it would be terribly uncomfortable because you'd be trapped in concrete blocks and your left side would be covered in gravel and dirt. But it should give some idea. We dug the open space out back in March, and are now digging out what's dead ahead of the viewer. The first two I-beams in this picture are gone. The house now rests on the new concrete block wall. We still have the beams, though, and we'll use them again very soon.

Once we run out of things to dig...

Dude...Where's my wall?

Poof! No more siding! Well, not 'poof' exactly. It actually involved a crowbar, sawzall, shovel, and other nasty implements. But it had to be done. You may notice the siding is different: the front of the house (with my mama standing in front, above, and the first pic below) has asbestos shingles; the side of the house (that Shawn was ripping down in the second picture below) has what we believe was original wood siding. The asbestos shingles we're keeping to place back over the completed wall.


Also, in that picture above of the original wood siding Shawn's removing, you may notice a grey concrete foundation. Look carefully in Shawn's shadow. It's not a concrete foundation, it's a 1-2 foot deep brick foundation with a 1/4-1/2 inch thick layer of concrete "painted" (like stucco) over it. W. T. F....?

While I have many complaints with the people who tried to fix the house up over the years (many....), I'd like to take a moment to point out some rather impressive original work. Take a look at the following picture.



At this point (after a century of hard work by termites, mold, and other forces of nature), it's a little hard to find the beauty in this. The sill, is outlined in green, and the corner stud in yellow. That oak sill was shaped with an ax (we could still see the marks) and the corner stud had a square knob hand carved into its base. The sill had a corresponding notch cut into it so the two pieces would fit firmly together. Can you imagine doing all that work?

Speaking of work, today we began to talk about siding. This asbestos can't stick around forever and, let's face it, the formerly nice wood siding is crap. Right now, I'm loving Newell Turner's siding on Twilight Field. It's vinyl (super easy to care for) and the look of vertical lines gives it a real farmhouse look. Well, we'll see. We have plenty of other work to do first. :-)

Goodbye, Mr. Subfloor!

Bye-bye, floor!! Shawn finished ripping it up today. The first two pictures are one room, the third picture is the other room. The fourh is an explanation. Remember the importance of foundations and sills from yesterday's lesson? Well, that little pile of bricks IS our foundation, and to it's left a concrete block IS our foundation, and to the right there's, well..., very little. Our busted house needs some help.

Oh, and in the picture down below... Those two purple lines outline the sill. Or at least they outline where a sill ought to be. It appears to have partially rotted away. Again, note also the little brick foundation to the left and the utter lack of foundation to the right. Yeah, that wall moves when you grab it and shake it with one hand. Looks like we have a little work to do.