Chapter 2 - Day 1

As any of you loyal readers know, we have been involved in a classic contractor nightmare -- worthy of a Dateline NBC expose...we'll we've turned the page and are now happy to say that we are moving on. The first step in this process was selecting a new contractor. After interviewing several folks, we decided to go with Ed Mcqueeny who owns a company called Old House Restoration. (makes sense right). During the process of "interviewing" Ed he impressed us with the amount of time and thought he put into his analysis of our situation. I think he actually spent over 12 hours at the house just looking and thinking. He was brutally honest - which was intimidating at first (can you say Money Pit?) but also refreshing. So today was day one on the job - to prep for Ed and his crew I spent some time at the house taking off the water table and some siding and then the first course of sheathing to expose the sills, which Ed felt strongly about replacing. It was difficult taking a step back but gratifying to understand that the work is going to be done correctly this time. In the photo above, you can see the front right of the house. Hector, one of Ed's guys was able to dig out the field stone that the front corner post and sill were sitting on. It was amazing how easily this part of the foundation came out. He then built a foundation for the big rock that you see there now. This provides a much better footing for this corner of the house.

Hector's next task was to remove part of the sill that Mark and Rocky put in. They are replacing the new sills for several reasons -first, Mark's sills were bolted into the foundation but only using a 6" J bolt -- code requires at least 10" bolts. They only replaced a section of the sill because so that the house could rest on the other part of Mark's sill. It took him all of 10 minutes to remove the sill and the loose rocks that it was sitting on! The next step was digging down to large foundation rocks, installing a 2x12 pressure treated sill plate, leveling it, and filling in the space beneath the sill with larger rocks. Doing this allowed Hector to install a longer bold that will attach the sill plate to the foundation. On top of the sill plate, Ed and Hector will place a 6x6 to which they will attach the floor joists.

You can see in the photo above that the sill plate that Mark and Rocky installed is already bending. This is what the whole house is built on.

In these two photos you can see the end of a days work. The top one compares the two sills and the bottom shows Hector's foundation work.

So, things seem to be going in the right direction. Tomorrow Jay will return to back fill the foundation and regrade the property. Mark Eldredge will return to finish up a part of the foundation that couldn't be poured.

New finish date is February 17, 2010.