House + Foundation = BFF!

This week seems to be flying by. Our trusty excavator operator Harvey has put in our drain tile and dry well and also backfilled the foundation. This morning (Thursday) Brent and his crew arrived to lower the house onto the foundation. By lunch time it was in place except for a few minor adjustments and some fine tuning to try and level out our floors. They also installed jack beams in the basement so that the carpenters can start replacing the floor joists. The house is in its final resting spot now and the finish line is just coming into sight now. A few more weeks and we should have the first part of this metamorphosis complete.
To see more pictures click here.

Reno Project-House and foundation meet one another.

The new foundation revealed!

So here it is in all of it's glory, our new foundation! The guys showed up first thing Monday morning to strip the forms and start covering the walls in tar. Taking the forms off revealed a little issue though. One of our windows was put in the wrong spot. What seemed like an issue early in the morning was quickly resolved. A new window will be cut in and the hole already in place will be filled in. Apparently it's no big problem. The rest of this week will consist of getting a pre-backfill inspection from the city and relaying the water and sewer to the foundation. Once that's done, we can backfill. Then lower the house to meet it's new friend, the foundation. Updates will be posted on the weekend.
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Reno Project - New Foundation

The final turn / Foundation work

This has been another productive week. Brent and his crew took the house from it's semi-turned state and got it aligned in the proper direction. It was nerve wracking to watch, but they made it look quite easy. On Wednesday morning Trainor surveying came and marked out the four corners of our foundation in the hole dug the day before. On Thursday Brent and his crew slid the house over the hole and got it into perfect alignment with the corners laid out by Trainors. At this point Tim Larlee and his crew from Capital Construction came in and poured our footings. With the house high over head they made short work of their task and waited for the concrete to cure. On Friday morning Capital came back and put up their forms for our new 8 ft foundation. After lunch on Friday Mira Construction Concrete trucks and a pumper truck showed up to fill our forms. By about 4:00 the foundation was in and the crew were sent home for the weekend. Everything that was supposed to be accomplished this week was finished. Our project seems to be right on course. Hopefully our luck will continue, cross your fingers!
To see the photos of the week click here.

Reno Project Final resting place

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