Closing in on the finish line

Summerford:

[Note: this post was written from a house we were staying in while our place was being lifted. Many thanks to a great friend Pete who let us stay there rent free for a lot longer than we anticipated.]

We're getting there. On the weekend, I actually went to Hillgrade and had a look at the house. First time I've been there in over a week, although it feels like forever.

It was a bit of a shock to see something concrete (serendipitous pun) under the house. The knee-wall is there too, as I knew it would be. Having seen it now a few times this weekend, I'm not as upset by it as I was at first. They have roughed in spaces for windows should we ever want to put some in. There's a door - extra wide - to the crawl space.

The front (sea side) of the house is now in it's final position. It will not be lowered any further. The back will be adjusted as its time comes to rest on the foundation. They still have to put the block wall in the back and sides and are doing that as I speak, I should imagine. They didn't work on the weekend although the bossman said he would have liked to. However, the fellows haven't had a weekend off in five weeks so John said he thought it was time they had one.

So today, apart from finishing the block wall (atop the concrete foundation), they will put the weeping tile into the trench to conduct away the bog water that was causing us so many problems to start with. (Heck, if it hadn't been for this bog water, our house would probably have stood another century without intervention.)

John figures we'll be back in the house by Friday, which means the men will be finished by then, and John will have hooked the plumbing up. He has more work to do than just reconnect what he disconnected because he decided to move the location of the septic pipe as well as the garden hose. However, he's confident he can get it done in a day. We're not going to worry about getting the furnace hooked up before we move back because the weather has turned nice and we likely won't freeze before the furnace man gets to do his thing.

Here are some pics that I took on Friday. You can see the foundation, especially on the front. It gives a good idea of how things are going. 

John is going to sort through the wood that's strewn on the ground today. It will all become firewood. Our neighbour has a wood furnace and will take whatever we don't want, even if it has paint on it or concrete bits. I'm not crazy about burning painted wood but I suppose it's not leaded paint so....

Looking pretty darn good, I must say. Like a house that will stand for another hundred years.  Tis odd to see 90 degree corners. 

Post-lift pre-dig

Summerford:

And so it came to pass.

On the first day, the house was lifted. That would be Monday, June 9, for anyone who hasn't been paying attention.

We got up early. John around 7. Me around 7:30. I was coherent by 7:45, sort of. Didn't really matter. What mattered was that I could heft and carry, shove and pull. Choked down some cold cereal with an apple on top. Had to get some carbs because it would be a long day.

We had a few things to do before the lifters arrived.
1. We had to take the top off the living room chimney. (Yes, I know I said in the previous entry that we were going to postpone any action on the LR chimney until later, but the lift man said that the top had to come off now to prevent damage to the roof during the lift. John also had had to separate this chimney from the floors during the previous day or two. I forgot to mention this. He had the pleasure of working in the attic where there hasn't been any fresh air in 100 years and where it is still the temperature of the earth when it emerged from the primordial ooze.
He could not proceed with this work though until the furnace man gave him the go ahead in case he (the furnace man who was due to arrive at 8a.m.) needed to run the furnace before dismantling it.)

2. The furnace had to be dismantled - or at least some of the ducts had to be removed because they would be in the way of the lifters. The furnace man would do all this, freeing up John's time, and also bearing the responsibility for any problems occurring with the furnace when we hooked it back up again. That part is worth whatever we paid him, which was very reasonable.

3. The sewage pipe had to be severed because it is not of the stretchy variety. and would not survive the lift - or the septic tank might be lifted from its resting place.

4. The water inlet pipe had to be severed so it would not get damaged.

As for me, I was tasked with getting us packed up and ready to leave. Clothing. Food. Stuff in general that we couldn't live without. You'd be amazed what's in that list.

By the time John got the chimney taken down to below the roofline, the furnace man was pretty well done with the furnace. John, bless his heart, left the sewage pipe until the very last minute. It's not wise to have a middle-age woman in a house without a functioning toilet for any more than 20 minutes.

The lifters arrived pretty much on schedule. Robert Coates from Glenwood and his crew of four men, two of whom were his sons.

Within the hour, they had cribs (crisscrossed square posts; see top left pic below) started under the house which would support the rails they were inserting from front to back of the house, as well as a place for the jacks which would raise the house, inch by inch.

Within a few minutes of starting to jack it up, the boss realized there was a problem. The floor in the living room was not lifting. Turned out that the living room chimney had been mortared to the sill plate. There was no choice. The chimney had to come down. So the strong fellows bunged a hole in the base of the thing (see top right pic below). John went up to the attic and started bunging the bricks down through and they took them out at the bottom. It was down in less than an hour. And the lift could continue.

By 3pm, with lunch and two coffee breaks, the house was up as far as it needed to go. It is 38" higher in the back than it was before we started. They took a while to get it all level, tweaking this jack or that one to get it just right.

And so it was done. As predicted, my stress level came down as the house went up, although I confess I spent most of the day at a friend's drinking tea and worrying.

We were informed that we were responsible for finding a digger to dig the trenches for the foundation footings. Huh? So why weren't we told this beforehand. We could have had someone lined up to come the very next day. No that would be doing things the easy way. Let's do it the Newfoundland way.

Luckily we had hired a fellow from Lewisporte last year to dig the hole for our septic tank. So we put in a call to him, telling him to call the lifter and arrange a date. We would have see how long this wait might be.

Banging down the LR chimney

In all her glory

 

 

D-Day approacheth

And so it has finally arrived. Okay, almost arrived. The big day. Tomorrow they will lift this house. And I won't be anywhere around. It would be like being awake when they cut you open. Who could watch that?


In the morning John will be in a scramble. He has to take down the living-room chimney to below the roof line and then cover the hole with plastic. He then has to put the furnace to bed (in cooperation with the furnace man who arrives around 8, we hope. Finally, he will cut the sewer line to the septic tank. And thus providing another excuse for me not to stick around. Women of my age have to be near a bathroom.

The house is almost naked tonight. The skirting has been removed from around the crawlspace, revealing the innards of the place. The furnace is sitting on concrete blocks, the sewer and water pipes are all exposed. The crumbling wooden shores are there for all to mock in their last moments of utility. Tomorrow they will mere firewood.

This afternoon I set out a row of onions. Kept some back for setting next week or the week after. Don't want a bunch of onions all coming mature at the same time. As it is we'll be eating a whole mess of onion soup towards the end of summer.

I also rescued some boulders that were dug up last fall when we trenched around the house. Rocks big enough to just get your arms around, some of them. Some not quite so big. All of them heavy as lead. I needed to make sure that they don't get covered with dirt or otherwise buried in the goings-on of the next week or two. I want them to put in the garden I'm going to build behind and to the side of the house when this is all over.

It's apparently 42 degrees on the humidex back home tonight. And here I was complaining about the cold breeze that's blowing up through the cold-air return duct from under the house now that it's open to all the ocean breezes.

So. Here's hoping the relation between my stress level and the house level is an inverse proportion: as it goes up, my stress level comes down.

Back at ya tomorrow night. I hope. Keep yer fingers crossed.