rocknhorse's blog

house project; the next step

 abuse

As exciting as this project is, it does have some sad moments! 

I knew Friday morning that the moving crew would be there demolishing parts of the house.  It's a necessary part of the move and cannot be avoided.  But that still did not prepare me for the sight that confronted me when I went to pick the kids up at school. 

A chimney is such a significant part of older homes.  It adds character and helps define the overall look of the house - at least it does to me - especially when that chimney is visible on the entire side of the house.  When I drove past the house to see what progress was being made, it sort of shocked me to see the upper level of the chimney down.  I realize it is necessary for the move and our plan is to try and rebuild it to it's original.  But it was still a shock. 

I have to give a lot of credit to the gentlemen who were doing this demolition.  They tried very hard to not damage the bricks so that we can re-use the original bricks.  There is no way we'd be able to match them up with modern bricks and these fine gentlemen not only realized that, but they applied much effort to keep those bricks in tact. 

I good friend hauled those bricks to the land over the weekend.  Apparently, older bricks have a tendency to walk away from job sites.  So we wanted to be sure to get them moved as quickly as possible.  Seeing as we were out of town for Labor Day, this friend volunteered to move them for us.  My job today (well, for the next several days I'm sure) will be to chip mortar off the bricks and stack them up until we are ready to rebuild.  While I work on that, my husband will be grading the land around the footings so that the crane will have easy access.

The moving crew has completed the demolition necessary inside and upstairs.  They had to cut the sheetrock/plaster about 3 feet high from the floor all the way around.  This also changed the appearance drastically, however for ME it was an exciting change.  That is that much less work "I" will have to do once the house is at it's new home. 

Having lived in an older home (one built in the '40s), I realize that codes were different back then, sometimes even non-existent.  However, the men that built this house must have been ahead of their time.  The wall studs are pretty consistent and for the most part straight.  Perhaps that's why it has remained sturdy for so long. 

We did find some wood that was water damaged.  This will require some finessing since the measures of wood today are smaller than the wood used in this house.  But we should be OK!  We have a plan for that! 

One other interesting dilemma that we encountered is that this house does not have shoeplates.  The frame boards upstairs are actually two stories.  They go from the lower level up to the top.  The plan for removing the upstairs level was to separate the walls below the shoe plates, brace and then remove the upstairs.  As it is, we will have to cut and build shoe plates to the walls.  This will actually add several inches to the overall height of the house.  We are very pleased about this because the upstairs ceiling height was only about 7'3". 

Be sure to check out my image gallery.  I'll be adding more photos of the work in progress.