Old houses have a way of surprising you, sometimes in good ways (“Original wooden floors that are likely in decent shape? Jackpot!”) and other times in not so good ways (“Both of your four-story chimneys completely failed during the house lowering – Congratulations!”). While I’m not officially keeping track, if I had to guess, I think it’s probably around 37 – Woodside vs 1 – Us. Along … Continue reading Demo: Second & Third Floors
I am pretty sure I’m not alone when I say basements can be kinda creepy. Granted, I don’t have a lot of experience with them – I grew up in a house without a basement and our current house is a slab, but the apartment I lived in after college had a basement. The apartment was in a beautiful old brick building in south St. Louis … Continue reading Renovation Plan: Basement
Happy 2017! So many things happened in 2016. We bought a farmhouse, tore off the porches and kitchen, met some critters & lifted all 143 tons of the house into the air. As covered in past blog posts, we started the foundation work by lifting the house at the end of August. After the house was in the air, we had to pull out the … Continue reading House Lowering
Back when I was younger and a novice at home renovation (circa August 2016), I wrote that I expected our house to “be up in the air for about 4-6 weeks.” Then a couple of weeks ago I told people I anticipated it to be down by the end of 2016. Oh, we are so close! But, looks like it will be mid-January before the … Continue reading Foundation – Part 2
I think I’ve mentioned before (or you have probably figured it out by reading this blog) that I am the novice in this operation. I spend a lot of time asking questions & searching Google, and then throwing buzzwords into conversations when people ask me how the renovation is going (“Oh, you know, then we had to move a crib* over eight inches.”) When I was … Continue reading Foundation – Part 1
For those of you who have been waiting patiently for a Woodside update, here it is: there is not a whole lot to do or say when your house is in the air and you are waiting on foundation bids. But don’t give up on us yet – I do have some new pictures to tide you over until the next “real” post. Before we get to … Continue reading In the Air
Spoiler alert: Lifting a house in real life is in no way similar to the movie “Up”. Just don’t want to set you up for disappointment. Although given our brush with critters so far, it wouldn’t have surprised me if we had found a talking dog or a giant bird during the process. When I found out we needed to replace the foundation at Woodside, I wasn’t surprised, … Continue reading House Lifting
