Not a very exciting post, just finishing off the work we started here, Thanks Mary.
We did a really nice job on the right most post, four pressure treated 2×10’s, planed (including hand planing), glued, bolted together and then all the holes and dents filled with epoxy paste. Result is a nice post which looks like a ye olde piece of timber which we’ll paint to hide the not so old epoxied bolt holes. The post of the left will be hidden within our six inches or so of insulation, so no need to make it look fancy.
We’ll use these two pillars to build a little alcove for when you come in which will house a bench and somewhere to hang your coats. I think we’re both looking forward to when we can work on these design features. For the immediate future it’s still heavy lifting.
No awards for this video, but it gives you an idea of where the house is situated and how it’s laid out. I’m sorry I moved the camera so much and next time I’ll be steadier.
If you haven’t visited the house in person this will help you understand what needs to be done. It’s a huge job as everything needs to be fixed.
We are planning to move into the ground floor while we work on the rest of the house and as you can see even the ground floor needs a lot of work. Slow and steady are our deep breathing exercises when we get too stressed. That said it’s not always stressful and it gives us the perfect escape from our rented apartment.
Why the Olympics ever stopped hosting ‘leaf raking’ as an event I’ll never know. In celebration of that event Aimee, complete with Olympics regulation leaf paddles and rake goes through the paces. To accompany her carefully choreographed movements Aimee chose a leaf raking classic, Yakety Sax by Boots Randolph.
Remember, this is a long and gruelling event which, on this occasion Aimee was fortunate to complete in under 5 hours, a personal best I believe.
Enjoy and maybe you’ll become a supporter of ‘leaf raking’…
I’m not sure sure what this room was ever used for, it had a small slit of a window and a soil floor. In our redesign we’ve dropped the floor a bit to match the rest of the ground floor and added a couple of windows. This room also needs to be split into two, a small bedroom and a mechanical/boiler room with room for a washer, dryer and slop sink.
It’s a shame that the bedroom will be smallish as when this floor is complete we’ll be living here for a good few years while we fix up the rest of the house. That said, small can be cosy. We’ll be creative with our use of space and I’ll be reaching out to my brother Matthew who has been devising some clever under the stairs pullout storage systems. Aimee who used to live in New York city says that compared to the housing there, our ground floor apartment would be viewed as pretty spacious.
Our friend and advisor Derrick suggested that this partition wall could also be load bearing to help support the long ceiling span above, which makes total sense and is why we put this decent footing down, complete with rebar. Derrick is the best.
Due to the footings, the floor of the mechanical room will be higher than the rest of the ground floor by about 6 inches, hence why we added a single layer of concrete blocks. Our experience with bricklaying is next to zero so we made a bit of a mess out of it and resorted to pushing in cement with our fingers, that said the end result was pretty good, plus it’s straight and pretty level.
As temperatures are getting pretty low I covered up the concrete in a plastic tent with a small heater which we kept on overnight. The following day we drilled down through every other block so we could hammer in 10″ sections of rebar which we in-filled with concrete and topped off with a nice smooth mortar – was the rebar and in-fill needed, not sure, but now those blocks aren’t going anywhere. By the way the Makita hammer drill makes light work of the holes, not sure who made the 1/2″ drill bit but but probably Milwaukee or Bosch.
After months of waiting our plumbing has finally been roughed in [spfx: Hallelujah] and we’re now connected up to the street. This doesn’t mean we have a working loo or sink etc., just that pipes are in place for such porcelain devices. We can now fill in all the trenches and holes, some of which were putting our walls at risk of failure. Thank you Nick and Cameron from Sinnott Plumbing.
In the pics you’ll see a section of the old cast iron sewer pipe. Cameron said he had never seen one as thick, it was a good 1/2″ and the metal inside looked as good as new. Pretty good for being under the ground for over 100 years.
Next step is a concrete pour, but before we do this we’ll probably beef up one or two small sections of our footings as we won’t have this chance again. After that we’ll start to prep for the pour which we now plan to do in the spring.
By the way do you like my magic shovel, you place it on the ground and it sucks soil onto it, it’s brilliant, birthday present from Aimee!!!
It was very nice to finally fill in the hole by our pavement/sidewalk which was at least four foot deep and was putting our porch structure and any stray member of the public at risk, we also recovered some of our driveway 🙂
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