This Project Is Up In The Air

Well, the house is, anyway! Mike went out to the house at 8AM, and it was already up. By 9, the movers were packed up and gone. It looks really cool, if I say so myself. The excavators should be out this afternoon. I should probably have more to say, but all I can think when I look at it is "Whoa!"

Mike holding up the house.

Kibay holding up the house with his head.

More Pictures

Mike showing his strength.

The door at the top goes to the laundry room. The stairs are gone.

Jeff fell asleep, but Kibay was a good guard dog!

HouseJacking Pt. 2

The steel beams are under the house, and lifting is tomorrow. There are four or five beams running the "short way" resting on two beams running the length of the house. The house movers are bobcat masters, and got two 46-foot beams under the house without hitting a single tree (or anything else). The hydraulics are all set for tomorrow morning, and I think we'll have a crowd out there to watch. Enjoy the photos!

Sliding the beams under the house



Beams resting on cribbing, ready for tomorrow.

HouseJacking Pt. 1

They're lifting the house right now! I went out at about 10 AM, and the movers were hard at work. One guy drills holes into the foundation with a jackhammer on the end of a bobcat. Other guys are whacking rocks out from the inside with sledgehammers. There's a big bobcat-sized hole under the front bedroom, and they've been scooping out the crawlspace dirt and piling it in the front yard. When they're ready, they'll run steel beams through the holes, and jack up the beams with the house on top! I'm hoping to have more photos up this afternoon, but I gotta eat lunch sometime!


Look at the size of these rocks! This is what the house was built on. How did they build a foundation out of these in 1870 with nothing but horses?

The chimneys are down, and everything is on track for house lifting tomorrow(?). At least that's what we were told on Friday. I'm learning that the best way to know what's going on at the house is to just be there, so I'll head over in the morning to see what the plan is. Who knows? Maybe the power company will finally show up! Yeah, right....

Ready to go

The last of the garage was cleaned up on Saturday. Only the outline is left, the block foundation that Grampa Al and Dad put in.[I've been informed by my Dad that Ken also worked on this. I didn't mean to leave you out, Ken! kw] Dad said they considered taking the garage down 30 years ago when its foundation was crumbling. It had been a wood shed, and was too short to park a car in. Instead Al measured his car, then expanded the garage exactly that much. They poured the floor in 1976. I know this because it's scratched into the floor, and my cousins and I spent many, many summers "cleaning" the garage. We'd sweep with every broom we could find and make huge clouds of dust. I think this was something our parents cooked up to keep us out of their hair, and it usually worked. Then we'd ride the bikes and trikes in and out. Someone always ended up on a trike, because there weren't enough bikes. And when I say "someone", I mean Janna or Mikey. Sorry, guys!
The photo of the day is of the empty basement. The water heater and water softener used to be here. The shelves on the right were full of canned goods: pickles, canned fruit, relish, jam, and some unidentifiable stuff. More shelves are on the other side. The room was actually perfect for a root cellar/pantry, the dirt floor and "ventilation" kept it cool but not frozen year-round. Aunt Marion says they used to keep barrels of potatoes down here, but it's always been a little creepy. She said when she was a young wife out at the farm in the 30s, she went down to the cellar to get potatoes, put her hand in the barrel, and grabbed a rat instead! Honestly, if the absence of rat stories is all we get out of this new basement, it will be worth it.

It's The End Of The Garage As We Know It (And We Feel Fine)

The power company still hasn't been out to disconnect the meter from the house. Our contractor has been going back and forth with them all week, and is frustrated with their pokey-joe "we'll get there when we're good and ready" attitude. Now the storm has pushed us off their schedule until at least next week, because so many houses lost power, including -- wait for it -- our house. We're in the unique situation of having to wait for the power to come back on, so they can disconnect it. Ah, the irony!

I went out to the house this morning and found the power out and no work being done. I took Dad over this afternoon to see our fallen tree and discovered: progress! They cut the garage away from the house with a sawzall. Dad approved and said that's exactly what Grampa Al would have done! I think Al would have taken it down shingle by shingle, board by board and saved every nail, but that's just me. It took them two and a half hours to take it down and get one dump truck filled (a MACK truck! the first word Jake ever read). They're coming back tomorrow (a Saturday -I Love These Guys!) to finish cleaning up. Instead of waiting for the power company to move the meter, they just cut around it and covered it up for the weekend. The pictures are self-explanatory, and kinda cool.