Boulders, Bricks, & Boards

We are still in the early stages of planning and preparing for the work on the house that we will tackle first.  The Martin's left everything in the house so we have spent the last couple of months removing things from the home--furniture, blankets, sheets, dishes, pots, pans, kitchen towels, etc.  You name it we have found it. 

What's next?  From the moment we walked into the house for the first time you could definitely feel variations in the floor.  I just chalked it up to it being an old house built in 1920's and the fact that it was on pier and beam.  The ground in Texas moves and shifts with the ebb and flow of the dry, hot weather we have so it didn't seem like anything unusual.

But, my husband, who tends to want to do things right and not skip steps looked at it a little differently.  You know when you are building a new home you start with pouring concrete for a foundation.  Everything starts with that solid foundation ---he feels the same way with this house.  So, he has been talking to house levelers about what it would take to level the floors in the Martin House.

These are the pictures that one of the companies shared with us.  He was very positive about how the actual boards holding up the floor were in good condition and he would only need to replace a few but not like he thought at first.  But, we were quite amused by the materials holding up the house---boulders, bricks, and boards as you will see in the pictures below.  The boulders he said would have been brought in by horse and wagon, placed, and the house built around them.  There are five boulders under the house.  My dad thinks they could have been pulled from the Talpa Lake when the Corp of Engineers came in and dug the city lake.  

The bricks which are stacked up in a couple of the pictures below may have been added later since they don't match anything with the house.  You see this clay type brick with finger groves on one side in the area on buildings that were built around the 40's or 50's.  What is amusing is how one picture shows the stack of clay bricks crumbled!  Then a brick or a board was added to stack on top to be high enough to  reach the floor.  Definitely had to improvise and used the materials that were handy at the time.

The most amusing (or disturbing) picture, fifth picture down, you can see four 1x4 boards holding up the floor.  Hilarious, how could those little twigs hold up anything!

And last but not least is the river running through.  If you see the picture with the pipe laying on the ground with a joint facing up, you will notice how dark the picture gets on the other side.  That's because water over the years that has been running off the yard has run under the house and washed out the dirt.  Nothing was wet but you could definitely see how the ground has eroded over time.

It will be three months before the house leveling company will be able to get to us so we will keep cleaning out the inside.  More to come!