Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Foundation, smoundation

Hey it's ONLY a bearing wall, the future "Shear Wall" for the whole house. Why should we expect a foundation beneath it? There's not even a beam!

The day started with a bad area of dry rot in the ceiling/roof. This is right above the area mentioned above. The original house was built on a concrete slab. The addition, which doubled the size, has a small crawl space. We were aware there was a "notch" in the slab where there were drain lines and water lines, and thought that was just a way to deal with not putting pipes in concrete. SURPRISE! Back to the architect, new drawings/specs...someone is going to have to crawl in a tight space, dig a damn big trench with a gardening trowel, and it damn sure isn't going to be me! (Space limitations, otherwise I'd be "Happy" to, yeh right)

Maybe tomorrow I'll add some pics. No camera today.

This is turning into "The Money Pit" I can't say without blushing how much we're paying for new appliances.

Side note: the roofers for OUR house got 99.5% done in one day (12 hours) Just needed a little flashing (metal, not bodies). Roof last Wed, next day nothing, called, "We'll be there tomorrow", a week later, still haven't seen them, but THEY CASHED THE CHECK!

3 comments:

  1. Yikes. At least you're retired and not dealing with all this on lunch breaks and after work?

    Sweets and I got lucky when we had to put a new roof on our house. At the time his sister was dating a roofer. He, Sweets and my brother spent two days putting it on. We bought materials based on the boyfriend's recommendations, my brother's labor was free, and we paid the boyfriend $500, about what he would have made at work but under the table so he could get away with not paying taxes. Did you know that certain colors of your shingles can value to the house beyond just having a new roof? In all, we saved over $1500.

    It's always a good idea for homeowners to maintain friendships with roofers, plumbers, electricians, and carpenters. Maybe you should have a barbecue.... ;-) I bet they'd show up then.

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  2. Anonymous8:38 AM

    That looks like a huge project. Around here we can barely manage small home improvement projects, like having a plumber come in to fix a leaky faucet.

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  3. God, remodeling is never easy and never goes as planned.

    Deep breaths.

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