Demo, Demo and More Demo!

Demo of wall in dining room

Demo wall where sliding glass door is now in dining room

Removing the wall between the living and dining room

Widening the kitchen opening

Getting ready to demo the old stairs (outside wall of the old stairs)

Hole cut into the roof for the dormer that holds the kids bathroom

Opening the wall between living and dining room (opposite side view)

Wall is almost gone

The Amazing Floating House

So our first order of business was to fix the foundation. It was constructed in 1894 from limestone and the mortar in between the stones could now be crumbled with your fingers. The front part of the house was the worst and was pretty much sitting on the ground (hence the massive amounts of termite damage). They brought in huge jacks and lifted the house and tore out the old and prepared for the new. They also added a french drain system to keep water out of the basement.  You want to see some hard work, this was it! These guys busted their butts dragging rock and mud out of our basement by hand and worked in 100 degree heat day in and day out. We had some cracking in our plaster from the raising of the house but not too bad for everything they did. The new foundation and steel beams have given us much more piece of mind. The basement is also much drier than it once was, but not totally. Here are the pics of the process.

The old foundation removed

Our high tech security system we had...plywood!

Yep, that is daylight you are seeing.  We were home to squirrels and a cat for a while : )

These are the jacks that were holding the house up

The stones from the old foundation, we are using them to make a sidewalk

New concrete blocks going in

Some of the cracking we had in our bedroom