notes from behind the coffee counter

Previously on Adventures In Homeownership…..

Well they finally finished hammering, shoveling and pumping. The foundation is stable (at least on that side of the house.) Mentally Jen and I feel better now about this whole process. Especially now that five days of banging is finally over. Biggest problem now is to shore up the hill on that side of the house. Its pretty bad now. Mostly rock and cement pieces. I think we’re gonna do the retaining wall ourselves. After this expensive ordeal a little of our own elbow grease might be in order. Turns out, as I heard through the grapevine, at one point they were going to fill holes back up and give up on the job. They took a big loss on this job. I kind of feel bad, but how was I supposed to know? If I got anything out of this mess, its when we buy our next house I’m hiring a foundation expert(s) to check out the bottom of the house completely. On the other hand the owner of the company told me personally that he too will do things differently. No more bidding on a job without a clause for unforeseen extra work. He was great guy actually, and assured me that he would keep his word and finish the job. Hey we live and learn, right?

By the way, when those piers hit bedrock its a big boom. The first one Jen and I were like, what the hell was that? No house shaking just a big THUD. Nine times over two days. Once the shoring up was done I had to get the blocks repaired. We had a guy come in repair the shitty blocks. I got a really good deal. One thing about this recession (and I do kind of feel guilty about it) is a lot of these guys are working really cheap. Its that bad here. He tucked the blocks back in fixed every crack along the entire house and filled all the gaps in the sill with foam. Essentially, the crawl space is sealed.

Biggest problem, although turns out its not, was the concrete had adhered itself to the footers (probably intentionally done.) Well that prevented the footers from being “jacked up” to level. So looking at the blocks on the south wall you’ll see they kinda slant downward at the corner. But its not a problem because the house itself never fell or sagged. The floors in here are still level. I’m kind of glad because I feared that jacking up the house to a perceived level sitting was going to crack drywall and maybe damage the windows. Not to mention that the SE corner is where our office is, with three custom built shelves across both walls. Filled with a ton of books and two computers and hard drives. Could have been a disastrous situation.

Before. Very bad. That block is about to fall out.

Now. Tucked nice and neat. The entire corner blocks are all flush and flat. Still leans thats because they couldn’t raise the foundation due to the concrete situation.

Now we just got to install a perimeter drain with a sump pump in the crawl space. Way too much concrete outside to do it effectively. Yeah, more money. However we’re going to do the retaining wall next to fix that hill. We’re thinking a two level terrace. And bury the drain pipes properly. Shrubs or something of that nature on the bottom and grass on the other. A flat lawn would be good, tired of mowing on hills. Come to think of it, tired of mowing period. How’s a rock garden sound? Or cactus? The front yard is going to be a bitch. Seriously thinking of ditching the flower beds and putting a small deck or just let the lawn spread to the house. Would love to make that whole side of the yard just ground cover.

Problem with homeownership is the house always looks like it needs work. Hey, lets change this or we need to fix that. Your never done. In actuality, I still haven’t finished the kitchen which I started like five years ago. I’m already ready to redo the bathroom as I hate the floor we put in there. Craziness. And the best part is, with the exception of energy saving upgrades, none of this is tax deductable. No wonder this country is broke.

So here’s three galleries of photos.