The “crap kitchen” hid rot

Workers made great progress digging out the area for the new foundation and framing it in concrete. In the process, they discovered some rotten wood in the corner of the house under and next to the second back door. Part of our impetus to doing this renovation was that we suspected that a house this old with many, fairly short-term residents would mean that the house had some structural damage. Rain leaking in under that spot in the basement indicated that we probably had a problem we needed to fix. This week, the weather is warm, dry, and windy, which will help at least dry it out, but our contractor will need to reinforce one section (that will be covered by the new foundation) and replace a section that will be under the new kitchen. This will cost us more money, but it’s quite a relief that we are building a more stable house and eliminating worries we had anticipated. After the concrete foundation framing was complete, workers filled in the dirt and hauled away the excess:

Our next steps include relocating the electrical and wifi boxes on the wall. (You can see them on the pic on the left) that will move to the other side of the house. We are still not sure when that will happen. It does appear that nothing more will occur until a week from today when our contractor loads a bunch of building material in our yard and garage to begin in earnest, including shoring up the rotted wood. Perhaps in the meantime, workers will replace the fence section (six feet behind the air conditioner in the left photo) that they took down temporarily to access the massive pile of dirt created by digging out the new foundation.

Today, workers visited repeatedly to shovel part of the pile of dirt and stray concrete into the gap between the new foundation walls and what had been a garden. They were amazing, again, working incredibly hard and clearly focused on returning the yard to be as tidy as possible. Another crew came later to clear the extra fill dirt through the removed fence sections.

All that good news is not to gloss over that even in this early stage, the stress is difficult. Saoirse the dog hates any visitors that she can’t see or with whom she can snuggle, although she is less freaked today that she was Monday. Both humans struggle to adapt to things we are so used to, such as using the back door and being outside without our backyard furniture (whine). Our abnormally warm weather ends this weekend with rain. Now I worry about the open new foundation (and the rot) will mean more water in the basement and further weakening part of the foundation that will be covered (and therefore protected) by the new foundation. Worry, worry, worry.

Then, of course, I went inside to play with the dog and let her out because Dan was outside. Yes, I forgot ALREADY that there is no fence on one side of the yard, so fear abounded. Fortunately, Dan came to the rescue with roast beef leftovers to lure her back into the house and her harness so we could tether her up outside.

As I said, we are NOT used to the “new normal”!