Update....What's going on Inside!

Update!

Just thought I would share some of the pictures of the inside of the house. We have been working on taking out most of the plaster. While jacking the house up, we had some major cracks so replacing the plaster with drywall was the only option we had. While removing the plaster we have found some fun stuff! Check it out!

Here is a before picture of the stairwell before we removed the plaster and decided if we remove the wall it would open it to the front room...Great idea I think.

Before

After!

The challenge is going to be to find another post for the other side of the stairs...not to mention the bannister and spindles! Ha Ha Should be fun!

 This is looking from the front room through the "wall" that was there. It will open up the Front room so much!

 I'm standing on the other side of stairs. What a view, I love having the open.

 This was a huge change! Someone, years ago, added a closet the kinda hung over the staircase. It was odd...to say the least. So we decided we could remove it and make the stairs a real focal point. Here is a before picture of the stairs...and the closet.

Before

Before

Here you can see my husband took the closet walls out but left the floor. It's an unusual view but I think you can see how open the stairs will be.

After (I'm at the top of the stairs)

We will now have 2 windows open to the stairs. (the floating floor will be gone soon)

 Here  I'm standing at the landing. You can see how open it will eventually be, and we found 2 chimneys that we will hopefully be able to leave the brick exposed

We will finish the railing to complete the look.

Straight Lines....Not Blurred Lines!

Oh My Look at Those Lines!

I stopped by the house today and I am so happy with the progress. It is amazing what is happening over there. The weather has been great, and the guys have been working so hard....its amazing!

South side of the house

Front

North side of house

The siding looks so straight

Front siding....straight as can be!

And for the inside...

You will not believe the changes going on inside. Plus we have found some fun details that we are going to try to restore.

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Can you see what I see???? Yes that is brick! There are 2 brick chimney's that were used to heat the home with wood burning stoves. We are going to try to keep them exposed.

We realized the wall that the staircase shares with the front room could be taken out (hopefully) to open the stairway up.

I am on the landing of the stairs looking up. I think we will keep the brick exposed here too!

This is the upstairs half bath. We are planning on keeping the tub...I love it!

The "boys" room...Ya the floors are wood but the are so dusty and dirty they look white

Downstairs front room...hopefully we can work it out so the staircase is open to this room too.

The bay window room (south side of the house). The floors are actually wood here too...just dirty.


I can't wait to see if there are any more surprises. 

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. 

The Porch....What were they thinking???

The Porch....and all that concrete!

Just in case you thought we had given up, we have been waiting for the guys schedules to open up to start on the demo for the porch. The McShane house has this giant concrete porch on the front that wraps around three sides. It is a huge amount of concrete!

This is the front ( you can see the 3 windows)

North side on the porch...

This is one set of stairs...the other is on the north corner.



Well we started the demolition of this porch, I think it was added around 1950. Im not sure why they added it. It doesn't really go with the style of the house. After the porch was added it caused water to leak in and the foundation to fall. 
But anyway, the demo of the porch is ending up to be very interesting.

Here we go..... Taking out those overgrown bushes made a huge difference! They wont be back!

View From the driveway

From the Front

You can see here the progress here. The porch wall is about 18" tall.

North side of the house

From the front of the house

The wall is gone....(north side of house)

So this next picture is about where they ended for day one! I talked to the workers and got some interesting info. The stairs were solid concrete....I asked "is that normal?", and with a sly smile the worker said "no ma'am". He said it took them about 3 1/2 to  4 hours just to jack hammer the stairs out!  Plus, he said the stairs had some whole river rocks IN the concrete! I have no idea if this was usual for back then but the workers found it unusual for sure!

The stairs used to be there.


Here we are at day 2! 

Front of house....

This is the south side of the porch, second set of stairs are gone


This is where it gets a little interesting. This picture below shows the jackhammer at work, notice the thickness of the concrete. Most of the porch was about 8" thick. In this picture below.... the concrete is about 12"-14" thick. The guys were having a hard time moving it to the dumpster. CRAZY!

Huge chunk of concrete!

South side of house.


On a side note... We found this old medicine bottle in the dirt under the concrete. I can not believe the jack hammers did not break it. To bad the label is gone and the stopper was missing too!!! We have also found a ton of marbles! We can only assume kids have been rolling marbles in that front room for decades.

Things should start moving along now. We are finished with the move and we can concentrate on just one house.....not three! Phew! See ya soon