Woo-hoo! Part 2

We got inside the house today! Woo-hoo! This is one of the worst cracks we found, but this is where the chimney runs thru the wall, so that was expected.
The kitchen wall is in the worst shape. The plaster has completely separated from the wall, and there are several long diagonal cracks running all the way thru it. This is what happens when your house goes from nowhere-close-to-level to level. The back door, also in this wall, DOES NOT OPEN. They took the doorknob out, then they pulled all the hinge pins out, and it still doesn't budge. We came in through the front door, which never used to close right before, and now works like a dream. Go figure.
This is the former door to the basement. It's out of square in two directions, and doesn't completely close. Almost every door in the house has this problem now. Apparently the floor is now square, and all the doors are now wrong. The door to the downstairs bedroom doesn't open at all. It's not a huge deal, and actually makes us glad we did the big project, because the house was shifting all that time, and we didn't know it.
This is as far as the boys' bedroom door will close. It's scraping the top of the frame, and then gets stuck. The windows I tried seemed to work fine, but I won't be surprised if some of them are out of whack.
Other than the door thing, the only cracks in the walls were just paint cracks. Wherever the drywall had been taped, the paint cracked. Easy fix. All the pictures and stuff is still on the walls, nothing broken. Yay!

Woo-hoo! Part 1

The carpenters started on the back porch today. They think they'll get it framed out before the weekend, but the roofline will have to wait until next week. Still no stairs -- I think that's waiting on the basement floor being poured, which is waiting on the plumber installing the radiant floor heat pipes, and he's waiting on the floor being cleaned up and graded by the concrete dudes, who showed up this afternoon. Got all that?



The new porch will be enclosed, and run all the way to the edge of the existing north wall. We're losing the bathroom window and the crummy sewing room window, yay! It'll also be heated, which is a vast improvement over the old porch, and there'll be an overhang over the door. So exciting!



The front yard is back to being a yard, albeit a bumpy, rocky one. The contractor was Not Happy with whoever sprayed the black waterproofing stuff on the foundation, because they went Much Too High, and now they have to re-grade the dirt higher to cover it up. He said at least it'll have very, very good drainage!

Gettin' There

The plumbing is being roughed in. The floor won't be poured until the radiant heat is put down.

We have backfill around three sides! The west side is not done yet, but all the piles of dirt have shrunk considerably.

The inside walls have all been sealed with very stinky grey stuff. Glad there's still a lot of air flowing thru there. Peew!

Walled In

The egress window wall is done. Until the stairs are done, the only way into the basement is with a ladder.
All the walls are finished and skim-coated. The yard and driveways are a sloppy mess after all the rain we had yesterday. Eeew!

Things Boys Like

Piles of Rock
Mud Puddles
Gooey Muddy Driveways
Random Trailers Left in the Yard

Wall-y

Most of the holes in the walls were filled in today, in spite of the rain.
The sump pump is in. It'll be under the stairs, once we have stairs.
A cat on a Cat.

Digging In The Dirt

This is the view of the house from the road, taken this morning.
This is the same view at 5:30 this afternoon. Not bad, huh? It almost looks like there could be a yard under here. They'll bring in topsoil to put around the house; not much would grow in this clay dirt.
We're keeping the dirt, because,well, we could use it. We have a silo hole to fill, and a low spot where the granary used to be, along with a few other projects too crude to be called 'landscaping'. For now it's all going behind the machine shed.
What is it about a pile of dirt that attracts kids like a magnet? (Dogs, too.) The driver guesstimates there are ten more loads to dump back here. Maybe it'll make a nice sledding hill.
The pressure tank is now up and out of the way of the concrete guys, who are coming tomorrow. Rain or shine, I hope, since rain is in the forecast.
A toast to the new basement!!