Expansion: Part 1

Since 2001 Carol and I have been living in an approximately 700 square foot apartment attached to her parent's house. Our kitchen is the size of a closet and my office, well readers of this blog already know about my "office".

Starting point, this old house.

Not to complain, our place is, dare I say, cozy, and it certainly keeps the snow off us. But the time has come to expand, adding a real office, an actual kitchen, and enough room to have more than four people for dinner.

Prying out the old walkway bricks? That's low skill labor that even a mouse clicking desk jockey like me can handle!

It all starts with some minor grunt work. Taking up the old walkway so we can reuse the bricks in the new entrance. An old Yankee never wastes a brick. Nor crushed stone, as I'm tasked with raking up the crushed stone outside our door.

Cannon emplacement for fighting off bear attacks.

Al hires a fellow to cut two holes in the foundation, one in the existing basement and one on the side of the house facing the new basement. In between is the slab that our apartment sits on. In a special appearance, Jabba Joe is present when we finally finish digging out the sand between the two holes. So far everything has gone smoothly.

Oooooo...conduit, how arty. Be really nice if it was in focus genius.


Digging up the gravel entryway and sifting out the dirt with and old seedling basket? That's low skill too. Call the programmer. Yes it's night. Beats watching TV after a day of hacking. The black flies aren't out yet either, so it was quite pleasant.

We are extremely fortunate that Carol's dad Albert is a licensed electrician and more importantly for this job, a former finish carpenter and house builder. No better choice for the de facto general contractor than a man building a house for "his little girl". Even if she's 36.

Leslie starts the real skilled work. Honestly, he can turn the pages of a book with that backhoe. I'm not allowed anywhere near any machinery.

There's not much else we can do without the pros and their heavy equipment. Al starts calling in his various cronies. Leslie Fox is first up with his backhoe.

Keep digging, what could go wrong???

Apparently plenty...the old crack in the foundation decides to expand its horizons.

Now the slab on which our apartment sits has always had a crack in it. We knew there was some risk in digging out the hill next to the house that there could be "problems". But we were more concerned with torrential rains hitting before the new foundation could be poured.

Fortunately the rain held off. Unfortunately the crack didn't. Strange noises started echoing throughout the house. A new and alarming crack started to grow near the baseboards of my living room and soon I had a nice view of the outdoors through my floor. The slab wall starts spewing sand and bulging ominously as our living room is slowly pulled apart. The sound of nails slowly being pulled out of wood is not pleasant.

After some discussion Al and George Willard, who is overseeing the foundation work, decide to tear down the wall and develop plan B.

With the wall sagging dangerously, there's nothing in it but to tear it down.


Going...

Going...

Gone!

George and Al consult while forms man Dana looks on and thinks, "I'm not too keen on working under *that*!"

Well this is certainly off to an exciting start. I choose to say "exciting" rather than "disastrous" because I'm an optimistic guy. Anyway, that's enough for this installment. Tune in (uh 'blog in' ?) next time for the continuing saga of this old house. In our next episode we answer such pressing questions as:

* Will Moby attempt to squeeze out of the crack in the floor in search of sweet succulent freedom?

* Will Scorpion2 fall into the 8' deep hole when she comes to visit and attempts to knock at our door?

* Can you code while there is a non-zero chance your house might collapse?

* And most importantly, just *what* is Plan B?

ptb