That's A Fact....Jack!

Well....The title may or may not give it away. The jacking has begun! We are so lucky to be working with some awesome guys that know what the hell they are doing. In a matter of a few days the house has begun it slow rise to where it used to be. There are signs everywhere that things are moving. Lots of cracks in the plaster and gaping cracks in the floor. Its awesome!


First they took off all the siding revealing the rotten wood underneath. Some of the wood was dust and some of the wood was still there but in bad shape.

This is the north side of the house

You can see the front door in this picture

Front of the House (they took up this much of the siding to expose the wood that was still good)

South side of the house (looks like there had been some repair work done on this side of the house)

The south side of the house did not seen to be as bad as the north side.

Close-Up of the wood rot


Once all of the Siding was removed, and the rotten wood was gone the bottle jacks were brought in. They began in the middle of the floor and jacked it up an inch and a half and waited a day or so. Then they jacked it another inch and a half. You could not imagine the difference 3 inches makes.

 

 

I don't know if you can tell, but the 3rd floor joist from the bottom has a jack under it. You can see the wood looks like it is bowing up....

This is the front room, where most of the foundation issues were.


You can see that we have started to remove the plaster. We started in the front room because we were told the plaster is so heavy that if it was removed the jacking process would be a lot easier. So far, so good. Plus, it is cracking everywhere and falling off anyway.

The ceiling had to go because it was bowed just like the floor

You can see the new wood that they are replacing the rotten wood with...

You can see the big difference in how level the house is now...

North side of the house

A quick shutter story....

So we took the shutters off the house to try and save the ones that were currently up. If we need to have them re-made, we have to keep with the same style. We realized that these might be the original shutters! 

They used to be black, but they look more gray now

I think these are square wood "nails" or dowels to hold them together. We are hoping to just repair these and repaint them. They are in pretty good shape for being so old.