Getting a Lift

One of the things I love about our home is that it ‘evolved’.  Major ‘additions’ to the house came over time and probably came about less due to planning and more due to simple opportunity.   Our pantry/fat room/dog room space is quite wonderful and I love it’s very usefulness, however there was probably more ‘hopefulness’ than ‘planning’ when it was added on without a foundation.  Even I could tell it was sort of ‘pulling away from the house’ and when you went inside, it didn’t take an engineer to sense that the room was sinking down in the corner, in fact it felt like you were walking aboard a ship that was listing.  No worries, My Loving Spouse can fix anything!

Someday the pantry/dog room will turn into a proper mud room/laundry room/pantry – thought out space, but for now shoring it up was the goal.  We got a head start from the Grand-dogs who decided to do a bit of excavating under the rotting siding corner piece.  With the job begun, it was time to get busy and unearth the dept of the problem.  My Loving Spouse started by attaching two 2×6 beams to the side of the house, as there was a fair amount of rotting wood and we needed to be able to lift against something solid, then he broke out every jack he owned (4) and we went about the process of jacking up our house, okay not the whole house, just one end.

I was very impressed with our progress, until My Loving Spouse started saying things like… ‘watch out in case these jacks don’t hold’.  I was the brick fetcher, big jack cranker, trash picker-upper and saw-dust mover.  The walls are about 12 inches thick and filled with saw-dust, which was the age-old solution to insulation.  Every time we raised the walls up more saw-dust came down, and I mean a LOT of saw dust.

Snickers, best dog ever, watched the proceedings without worry.

 My Loving Spouse lifted the house walls up 9 inches, which is a lot of inches for a house!  It even looks level!

Out of the walls fell stuff!  5 old burlap sacks, old newspaper and an old pair of overalls.  We hauled approximately 12 wheel-barrow loads of saw dust out to the front garden, the wind took care of some of more, and I’ve washed a fair amount of it in the laundry.

The interior wall of the dog room has crumpled a bit due to the lifting of the outer walls, so more saw dust has fallen into their stinky dog haven.  Unfortunately, we have one little glitch, as the outer walls went up, the floor in the dog room did not, so there is a gap, a hole, a parting of the ways which needs some more attention.  The other evening the dogs were inside having their after dinner sleep by the fire when we all heard some noises coming from the dog room, but all the ‘inside’ animals were account for.  Barn Cats!!  Cats that had never been inside before were prancing into the kitchen from the hole in the dog room floor/wall.  We had cats everywhere and more sawdust and dogs..  I’m just glad it wasn’t skunks.  The hole/floor/wall thing needs fixing/finishing, so the right animals stay in or out, the wall boards put back, the jacks returned to the shop, but My Loving Spouse can fix anything and so for tomorrow’s project.. I am just hoping he will.