A productive Monday!

What a difference a day makes! After a quiet week last week, with only one day of work performed (due to personal circumstances with one of our contractors), Jon and I were amazed to watch the house get raised 6 feet and turned about 45 degrees around all in about 8 hours!

Brent's team laid 10+ levels of railways ties in order to get the house up to the height needed to get under it and set it up to spin. Then they placed two additional steel beams under the house, at wide angles to the existing pair of beams holding up the house. The two new beams were lubed up with Sunlight dish soap so that the existing beams could slide smoothly, steel on steel. The house beams were chained together, then the excavator got linked in and pulled the house around. Once they reached roughly a quarter turn, the bottom beams had to be repositioned to allow for further turning. The new supports have been set up, and tomorrow Foxhall Cottage will complete her revolution!

See how it unfolded here:

Reno Project - Jacking ends

and here:

Reno Project - Moving the House

Up, up and away!

After securing the corners of the house with solid steel reinforcements, the compressor was brought in, connected to the four jacks, and away she went! The house was jacked up enough that an additional railway tie, plus some shim pieces have been added to the jack base, putting our house roughly 6 inches into the air clearing the stones on the driveway side of the house. Tomorrow they should be able to continue the jacking to gain a few more feet of height.

NB Power did make it by to disconnect our power supply and to confirm our temporary power permit. Reconnecting the power with our house in an entirely new location will be interesting to tackle, once the major work is finished.

Pics on Picasa as always:

Reno Project - Jacking begins

Jacking Beams are in!

Jon and I continue to be amazed by the pace of our project. On Friday our jacking beams arrived and were slid into the trenches and under our house in a matter of minutes! They then refilled the trenches and spread the additional soil around the yard to level the slope. On Monday, the jacking will begin!!

Pictures of the beams can be found here:

Reno Project - Beams in

Progress

We/our contractors have now logged 7 days of work on our reno project. We now have 3 new sills, and a moat around the house. We are also short one porch and 3 trees! The trees came down in a matter of minutes this morning, and we now have a full sized excavator in the yard! We've organized for our power to be shut off either tomorrow or Monday, so we're now packing to move out! The crew has been digging two trenches under the house, by hand. Luckily, the ground is almost 100% sand so while cramped, the work isn't heavy. Arrow (our basset hound) has already jumped ship (out of necessity - there's a gaping hole at our back door, and our front door has been boarded shut) to a luxury kennel (aka my parents' house).

It's been hinted that the beams to support the jacking will be put in tomorrow. With any luck, Foxhall Cottage will be airborne early next week.

Pics of the porch removal, tree removal and trenches are posted to Picasa here:

Reno Project - Beam trenches

here:

Reno Project - The trees come down!

and here:

Reno Project - Porch demo