Foundation=Done. View=improving

Sunday 29 November.
The bricks are set with caps, and the walkthrough to the crawl space has been cut out. There'll be a good amount of space underneath. Of course, shared with new ductwork, plumbing and electrical. But we'll be well above the previous crawl space, which was about 6 inches in places.















Of course, the foundation follows very closely to the old lines of the footprint of the house, at least on the east side, where we'll have 2 bathrooms, closets and other space. The blue sky on sunday was very nice. Gotta love the fronts in the fall in eastern NC!















So this brick height means the house will have to go up another 4 feet (rather than the 1-2 feet that we had thought). We need to get all mechanical and structural support out of the flood level (though it has never flooded on our lot).
















So I wanted to see what the view was like. Climbing up the cribbing on the back of the house and through the plywood that covered the former doorway between the hallway and diningroom, i could at least get to the front of the house. The picture below is from the boy's old bedroom - the windw to the right of the plywood (what will be a guest bedroom - now taking reservations!). I was hunched over to see under the tar paper that is under the soffit on the front, so add another 1-2 feet to the view. Adding another 4 feet to that shoudl just about do it. . . a rather clear view of Calico Bay and Crab Point from the guest bedroom, and especially the upper front porch.

A digger just their size

While watching the guys set the foundation, we couldn't pass up the chance to sit on the tractor that has been in the back yard for the past week. . . Lukas is in the seat in the first pic.

Footings and foundation.

The footings now cured (well, curing, but setup), Lamont and his guys can start laying brick. The solution to all the swater in the trenches was to add stone to the trenches to helkp draining. This means the footings were ~4" higher than anticipated. So we have to make a choice on how high we want the house. Not too high to be goofy looking, but high enough to be well out of flood potential, provide a roomy crawlspace (Chris' top priority), and still give us a good view of the water to the North.















7 courses of bricks it is. And 40 bags of cememt. 4 guys knock out this job in 1/2 day!

















The east and south side of the house still looks like a wreck.

Finally, back to progress

The water finally drained enough to get back to work. Trenches were started today (Monday 23 November) for the footings and foundation. But even if the water was not on the surface, the water table was still very high, and the trenches kept filling with water. The first picture was mysterious to me at first. . . the yellow arrow shows some interesting crib supports adjacent to one of the supports for the house )(13' above). Come to find out that the trench of two sides of that crib caused the soaked ground to givec way under the support and that corner of the house dropped about 10". Seeing how they were going to fill that trench with the supports in place was another mystery. 18 yards of cement later, we have footings and the first set of piers for the front porch. Now they point out that one of the cribs is exactly where an internal pier needs to be placed. So the raiser will bbe back out again to make an adjustment.

Rain Rain Rain

(Sorry for the delay. Lot's to keep track of around here. So let's return to our story on.  This should actually be dated November 12, 2009.)

Rain. Rain. Rain. a good 7 inches fell over the past day and a half. SO instead of watching our house float away, we decided to take a trip up to Maury, NC to check out where our new floors will be milled. Our Heritage Flooring was very helpful in describing the process and working with us on matching the old heart pine floors in what will be the second story. Our new (reclaimed) floors will likely come from beams that were part of a tobacco factory outside Greenville. This is a different company than we dealt with for flooring the hallway, but the planks will be very similar. . . lots of color variation, nail holes and knots - just the way we like it. And the boys were very impressed with all the big cool tools!





















Above is the planer and shaper they use to mill the planks.

We returned to find ~18" of water in a lake under the house. Were we nervous? Yep. Especially if one looked at the house from the road. . . it seemed to have a noticeable tilt to it.
















But the water did float some interesting items to the surface. We found a couple of bottles, and one in particular tells a bit more about the age of the house. The bottle is from Beadleston and Woerz Brewery in New York, which brewed only between 1845 to 1910.
















THis picture is from the alley and is showing water under the whole house and covering 3-4 railroad ties that the raisers are using to perch the house 13' in the air.

Stump removal

Just in time for a tropical storm, the crew removed the last bit of tree roots holding the foundation and ground together. . . joking of course. And we're not at all nervous about having the house 12 feet in the air on linkin' logs for 35 -40 knot winds and as much as 10 inches of rain. If they can get a break in the weather, they may get to grade some of the plot in preparation for digging footings.
Current historical evidence count: 1 bottle. Yes. our first old bottle today. That's it! We thought there'd be cans, coins and bottles scattered all under the house. But just one so far.

Up up up UP!

It took less than 6 working hours to put the house up the full 12 feet.

For scale, the boys are about 40" tall.  Of course, they had several comments on how the work was progressing and how they could help.
The synchrony in Farley's crew was impressive.  Short calls and hand signals were all that was necessary to get the jacks and cribs in order.  But the real work was done by this machine.

The system can run 30 jacks  simultaneously.  And yes, he's pulling a single lever to raise the hole house.  Mark even let me run the lever for a 14" lift.  Some of these guys helped raise and move the Hatteras Lighthouse, so we were pretty sure this would be a flawless job.

Nine of these raises the whole house using the 3 i-beams and a few outriggers.

Okay, this one still makes us a bit uneasy.  the back of the house looks unsupported.

And a final shot of Farley's crew finishing up the job.  The house is still about 2 feet shy of the final height. . . still need to figure out the real wall height after the foundation is set.

Chris spent most of Saturday morning collecting the old bricks from the foundation and chimneys and moving them to the back yard.  Along with the chimney we took out in 2005, the bricks will line some piers, stairs, a walkway and (phase 2) an outdoor kitchen!

Next. . . footings and foundation

Up up up!

It's time!
Farley and team arrived Tuesday morning, ready to work.  They made quick work of the foundation of the front porch.

(The plywood is covering the front door.)















"It's kinda tight under there."  Oh, really? (said Chris who recalls not 4 years ago when he was stuck between a floor beam and the ground. . . by himself.  Never claustrophobic before then.)
Three I-beams.  That all.  Two on the east side for the front part of the house and a long beam along the west side to lift the main part and the back addition (formerly the kitchen/diningroom).
And we found yet one last tree stump used as a foundation pier.  And the one that did the most damage to the place. . . to a post between the hallway and diningroom, and caused the major damage to the ceiling joist that we had fixed when we first bought the house.  We thought we had taken care of the last of them when we remodeled the kitchen. . . this one was hidden in a "tight spot" on the back side of the air return.  Never saw it.














(Wednesday 4 November)
By noon, as the boys were heading across town from preschool to the Avens, the house was still on the ground.  Still adding shims.  Chris stopped by ~2. . .

(This view from the rear has been looking pretty bad and probably will until they start rebuilding the addition.)
Unfortunatley, we missed most of the action today. . . stupid work meetings!  But this got the house up 4 feet, so the carpenters could come by and repair one of the rim joists.  More to come on Thursday.  Yep, Larisa's Birthday.  Hooray!

Halloween, using The Force

It was Kai and Lukas' idea.
What I can't believe is Larisa's believable danishes on her head. A magical result of Google research and "bunforms". . . I had no idea!
Ann St. in Beaufort and Brooks St., MHC were extra lucrative this year.

Calling around

Thanks to Paul Rudershausen, we found a mill to cut the logs from the tree removal at 505 Fisher. Mr Earl Jones has been working in wood mills since he wa 10 (he's now ~75? that's just a guess based on other evidence). Peter and I arrived at his home around 8 (after a country ham biscuit at Red Barn, of course), north of Swansboro on Belgrade-Swansboro Rd. He was clearly "retired", but had about 20 hours of work ahead of him this weekend. We drove onto his driveway, and there he was sitting in his golf cart, with a friendly "dog" standing next to him. The dog was a pygmy goat, named Pete. Pete kept us company the rest of the day. Hopping up onto the slabs while Mr. Jones was milling, and then would hop back down to gnaw on a fresh chip of cedar or cherry. He (was) also fond of his rooster, though less so after he saw what the rooster did to the seat on his fork lift. . . 'i was hungry for chicken pastry today'. The mill was a fine piece of machinery and organization. It took only 1.25 hours to cut the 4 6-foot logs to some of the prettiest boards that Mr. JOnes had seen. It was pretty cool. 'The saw is for sale if yall are interested.' Tempted? You betchya.
Now we wait. . . about 6 months for it to dry.