Moving On Up!

 I know you have been wondering what has been happening at the Martin House so I finally have an update.  At the end of March we were able to get a house leveling company to get us scheduled so that we could get the house leveled. Unfortunately, the soonest they could get to us would be mid-May.  Well, guess what has been happening in April & May----it's been raining!  It never rains in Talpa but guess what even Talpa has had lots of rain!  We were scheduled for the middle of May but got pushed back to May 17, 18, & 19.  Then it came a 3-4 inch rain so we are in a holding pattern again while we wait for the ground to dry out.

As I may have mentioned previously, my husband grew up in a construction family so if you are going to do any kind of remodeling the first thing you look at is the foundation.  With a pier and beam house he would tell you there is no difference.  You still need to make sure the house is level before you try to fix windows, doors, etc.  So much to my chagrin we are going to get the house leveled if it will ever stop raining!

On my March 21st post I showed you the pictures from under the house and you saw the pictures of bricks, boards, and boulders that were holding up the house.  Well, guess where the house is the most level?  In the places where the boulders are under the floor!  So, it looks like they knew what they were doing in the 1920's.  Here are a few pictures from the one day the workers got to work before the rain came down.

 The hole where these brave guys are crawling under the house.  Better them than me.

These are a few of the bricks, sticks, and cedar posts that were holding up parts of the house.

Here is where they had to chisel out the rock that was covering up the space between the ground and the bottom of the house.  You can see about a one inch gap where the house was lifted up.

This is the back corner of what used to be the kitchen where they were able to get the concrete blocks were stacked to hold up the house in that spot.

Another place where you can see the house being lifted.

This is where the original part of the house meets the part of the house that was added for a bathroom.  They were able to get concrete blocks stacked here as well.

Leveling a house is a big job evidently.  I would not have imagined what all was involved.  I told my husband we could probably do it.....just get a few jacks and jack it up, right?  Nope, it is much more involved than that.  His dad bought a house in the historical section of Galveston down by the seawall to remodel in the late 80's/early 90's and I remember him having to level it--it was a pier and beam house too.  I told my husband I remembered him just jacking it up with some jacks but he quickly reminded me that there was a little more to it than that. 

As of right now, we hope they will get back to work after Memorial Day.  Once they finish we were told we have to wait 90 days to do anything just to give it time to settle.  Patience has never been one of my virtues but I am learning to be patient in this process!

So sorry for the delays but we are still moving forward just at a much slower pace than I had anticipated!  We have been working on re-doing some pieces of furniture that we got out of the house so we will share that with you soon.  We have also decided on a slight change to the floor plan so as soon as we get that nailed down we will share that too!