November 3

November 3, 2009 is sixteen days from today. By the end of it, Shawn and I will be homeowners. It's a heady notion. But not a frightening one. We can afford it, we'll get the tax credit, which we can set up in a checking account and use to pay the mortgage and taxes for quite some time, and the payments will actually be LESS than what I've been putting aside each month anyway. Of course, we can't insure it until the foundation is done (January?). We're financing through the seller (Pop), not a bank, which is how we can buy it without insuring it. This is fueled mainly by the tax credit deadline. There are extension rumors circulating, but I don't put faith in rumors.

It's been rainy and miserable here, so yesterday we stayed inside and winterized, putting our inch-thick polyisocyanurate (foam) panels into the windows. I think this one-room living arrangement will be cozy this winter and keep the heating costs lower. The Ingalls' had it right -- cooking and living in the same room.

I made a no-reason-cake last night and left the oven door open when I was done. No sense wasting heat that's already been paid for. Speaking of Laura Ingalls, I made the light bread from the 'Little House' cookbook last weekend and think I'll do it again. If you've ever wondered how people stayed warm in the olden days, lemme tell you...labour-intensive cooking is the way to go.

Stay warm!

Stink Party!

You guys missed a great party on Saturday. We invited my mom over and we painted vile-smelling waterproofing over the new walls. Oh, it was a good time... you don't even know.

Actually, we have made a lot of progress since late September. Shawn built up all the exterior walls on the new footer (see diagram--the yellow is the finished footer, the red is the finished wall.) Then this past weekend we waterproofed all the exterior surfaces that were still exposed. So anything that's grey in the following pictures is new--and now black.

Taking out the I-beams is a bit by bit process. First, the blocks the house is sitting on have to be dry enough to hold the house (naturally), the the I-beams come out one at a time and we fill the holes they came from with a few more blocks.

Here, Shawn portrays the god, Atlas:

These are some pictures from the back part of the house we did over the summer and how we filled in the remaining blocks:

Second Third of Footers

Two (big) thirds of the footers are finished. In the above diagram, the yellow represents the first 'third' we poured and the purple is what we did last Wednesday. The thin red line shows where our new walls are, and Shawn's down there as I type building the walls up on the purple footers. The light blue footers will be our last, as well as the easiest with a simple U shape. The pour went better this time than last. At least the mixer didn't get stuck in the mud!! (Click here and here to see videos of the last time we poured.)

This is a pretty cool shot of how the house is being supported. If you notice that the sill supporting the wall is bowed heavily in the middle, don't worry. I'm just a poor photo editor.

The supports don't always work out quite as well as we like, which is scary, but...eh... we lived. The left side of this one is a bit taller, or lower, rather. We had them both dug down as deep as the one on the right, but when we dug alongside it for our footer trench we had an accident. It started to collapse. So we lost several hours but were able to secure it. The house didn't cave in.

I guess we were misguided by the heavy clay content of the soil this far down (about 8 feet below ground.) Most of our dirt is silty sandy stuff, but we found a few areas that had a good 3-4 inch deep layer of pinkish, purplish clay. Very pretty but a pain to dig.

But dig it we must! Here Shawn's digging for rebar that he hammered horizontally into the dirt during the last pour. About 5 feet of the bars are in the previous footer and 5 feet are in the new one.

When you pour a footer is sections, the places they meet are called 'cold joints' and require these bars as extra reinforcement because these cold joints are the areas most susceptible to cracking over time.

The cement blocks are helping maintain the 24 inch width required as we set up the forms. Once the forms are nailed together and spreaders put on top, the blocks will be removed. Spreaders are just 2x4s long enough to bridge the gap and hold the forms the correct distance apart during the pour.

For this pour, Shawn made two chutes that the truck's chute could easily move between. This helped get the concrete spread out as it came in, a.k.a. less work for us.

Here's the end of one chute, just after the pour. Allowing for overflow is very important. We can always toss out the excess, but if we order too little.... oh, snap...

All done! This concrete has been poured and 'screeded' (leveled out by having a 2x4 dragged across it.) This is a cold joint, so the rebar is deep down in it. All that's left is to remove that spreader on top, let it dry (see the color change?) and the building can begin. We took the weekend to enjoy company and relax and this morning Shawn started the new walls.

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.

Style

We’re still digging and I’m still waiting for a USB cord for the camera. Ergo, I have no news to report and frankly, digging is very boring.

So, I’ve started thinking ahead. Lately, I’ve been considering the style of the house. Most homes have a known style (Cape Cod, Ranch, Queen Anne, Bungalow) and I’d really like to give our house a uniformity of style itself. I’ve never been in favor of trying to be something you ain’t, so as much as I love Frank Lloyd Wright I will not try to convince anyone that my house is Fallingwater.

I explored the interweb and found a wonderful resource by Dr. Tom Paradis, an associate professor at Northern Arizona University, who says I may use his pictures as long as I tell you that they’re his. So, thank you Dr. P., creator of http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~twp/architecture/

I started my research knowing that this house was built in 1905 as a simple two-room, two-story structure. I knew that the outside walls that end in ‘points’ on top are called the ‘gable walls’. I knew we now had an L-shaped design. I knew that in 1905, my area was a tiny farm town known for simple country folk, not stylish modern architecture. And I knew from neighbors that some previous folks living here had done things like growing gardens and painting the house and the garage/barn the same garish cranberry color inside and out. I decided to only strongly consider those styles that were popular way before 1905 up through maybe 1910. I figured whatever I found, ours would be a simplistic version—not state of the art.

I finished my research having learned that the ‘pointiness’ of gable walls is a big factor in classifying American styles. Also, adding a lot of multi-dimensional stuff significantly changes the style. Here’s our house:

What is now the right half of the house used to be the whole house. There’s a gable wall around the corner of the right side and the used to be (of course) a gable wall around the left side. I suspect this is based on the Early Colonial style, which is actually no style at all. Folks simply built a shelter whether in Virginia in the 1700s or Oklahoma in the 1800s. While this house was built in 1905, it doesn’t appear to have been designed by anyone desiring more than a roofs and four walls.

In later colonial periods (when America had more cash for its government buildings, and Americans had more cash for their homes), some of these other familiar styles popped up among the stylish. The Federal Style (1780-1850) and Greek Revival (1800-1855) are very similar and noted for their columns and wide gable front pieces. (Think of the Parthenon, Lincoln Memorial, NY Public Library, College of William & Mary.) The other major revival in American architecture was the Gothic revival (1840-1880). These buildings are known for their “Steeply pitched roof” and arches (think church steeples, medieval cathedrals, Chicago’s Tribune Tower.)

Both Greek and Gothic are stately and beautiful, and neither resembles our home, mostly because both rely heavily on their gables (low vs. steep) for their style. Our gables are medium and simple—'farmhousy'. So, I continued my search.

The Victorian era boasts a greater variety of styles than I had thought. The Victorian house that popped into your head just now is probably a Queen Anne (1880s-1905.) Often, when a town is described as having many “quaint Victorian houses,” it means Queen Annes which are known for their many different roofs, dormers, porches, gables, even a turret or two. Another distinct Victorian style is the Second Empire (1860s-1880s) known for its Mansard roof. This is a roof unlike any other: it has a flat top, like the Italian style, but the uppermost floor of the house has exterior walls that lean slightly inward and are covered in roofing materials, not siding. It’s very odd.

At this point in my journey, I had reached the 20^th century and still no style for my little house! I know it’s not the product of a single architect sitting down at his drawing board and creating a piece of art. It’s a mish-mosh of skilled and unskilled additions and “improvements” from 1905 to today! How could I possibly give it any kind of uniformity? But, you know, just because a house isn’t the work of a real architect, doesn’t mean it’s style-less. Here is Dr. Paradis’s narrative on what was happening from town to town from 1880-1910:

“The spread of Folk Victorian (and other late 19th century styles) was made possible by railroads expanding into smaller towns and cities. Mass-produced wood features could be transported quickly and cheaply almost anywhere. Home builders often simply added trim and ornament to traditional folk houses. Older folk homes were often updated with new ornamentation, now available everywhere due to pattern books and mass production and sale of wood features. A very common style found in turn-of-the-century western towns settled during that time.”

No, Delaware isn’t out west, but here’s something that actually made sense. These were homes built while Victorian houses were the fashion by homeowners who didn’t have the carpentry skills or the money to really go all Queen-Anne-Mansard-bling on it. So they improvised. These are the ‘Folk Victorians’: often L-shaped, with three gable ends, possibly a porch or two (or not), and whatever little Victorian details and trim could be squeezed in. Ours doesn’t have the detail work that the following two examples do, but the potential is definitely there.

Welcome to our Busted Folk Victorian Farmhouse!

For more insight visit Dr. Paradis’s site (all pictures except the very first one are his. Nearly all wisdom is as well.)

Also, check out Dave Taylor’s Victorian house site for more styles, details, and cool pictures.

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...

How to Replace Sills (Part 1 of ?)

Horrid news to report... We’ve been having problems with the digital camera. Somewhere between Mom’s and our house the connector cord has vanished. So there are some great pictures on it even now, but I can’t show them to you. Sigh...

Fortunately, the sills we replaced last week are for the second two-thirds of the house. So I have pictures of the ones we did back in March/April and the process is the same.

While some of this came from our favorite book, a lot was Shawn’s own invention. (He’s humble; he says he probably saw a picture somewhere.) If you recall our drawing of a balloon frame, you’ll remember that the foundation supports everything. But our foundation is crap, so that doesn’t help us. The sills support everything except the foundation. But replacing the sills is what this is all about, so that doesn’t help either. The wall studs support everything except the foundation and sills. Bingo! So how do you support and lift all the studs on a house but leave the sill just dangling loosely so it can be removed and replaced?

2 x 12s (or 2 x 10s) and bolts!

First we removed enough of the siding to expose the studs from about two feet above the sills on down. Then Shawn screwed two 2 x 12s horizontally against the studs. Next, he bolted them into the studs (two 8 inch, ½ inch wide wood bolts per stud). Those little chunks of lopsided wood just take up a bit of space and work as a washer. We didn’t want the bolt going through our interior drywall, which was still up in some areas.

Now, these bolted on 2 x 12s should do the job of a sill—if we lift it, all the studs will arise evenly and in unison. So, how do you lift this without touching the sill? Screw jacks!

We own two hydraulic jacks, which are on either end. They’re wonderful, but expensive. So we rented several screw jacks (an older, heavier, more cumbersome invention) from the Dover Rent-All. We’re the only people who have rented these in years, apparently. We placed a railroad tie on the ground right next to the old foundation then used the two hydraulic jacks simultaneously to lift the 2x12s. We placed the screw jack underneath in the middle to hold the 2 x 12s in placed, removed our hydraulic jacks and repeated several times over the length of the sill.

We did have to break down and use the car jack occasionally.

Check out that space between the stud and the foundation!

Now we just slide out the old sill and pop in the new one. Easy, right? Right...