The next big thing

Well, we're on to something new again. Now we've decided to redo Kayleigh's room - and really redo it, as in:

• tear down the wall that had been built dividing the front bedroom into two small rooms
• gut the room back to the studs
• jack up the front of the house
• frame for the new closet and the eventual ensuite bathroom
• insulate all of the walls
• drywall, paint
• sand down and refinish the original fir floors

All in two weeks! Yeah, right!


Well, the first two steps went really quickly - we had the room gutted within two evenings. Here's what it looks like:

The problem came with step 3. A previous owner had replaced the front porch posts but not properly built them on firm support. Over the years, they crushed the trim that they were resting on, causing the front to drop. The left corner was the worst, dropping nearly 2"

I tried to jack the house back up, but this proved very difficult - the wood under the front porch was so soft that the jack just sunk into the wood, rather than lifting the house up. Further investigation revealed quite a bit of rot in the wall:

The solution was to rebuild this wall and put the jack directly on it. That worked reasonably well and let me get the house to within 1" of being level, but at that point it it started getting really grumpy about moving any further. Since I really didn't want the house coming down on my head, I decided to leave it where it was and reassess things.

We've decided now to repair the whole front patio, re-enforcing the front wall enough that we can jack the whole front of the house up the remaining 1". The house has had a chance now to get used to its current alignment and once the patio is solid, it should be possible to jack the house up the remaining 1". That's this weekend's project!