The time has finally come to knock out our entire front wall! Eeeek!! But before doing so Kory wanted to insert a large beam to help hold up the roof. We will also be using the beam to lift the roof. At the moment our ceiling by the front door is only about 7 ft. 4 inches tall it goes down hill from there. The opposite side of the house the ceiling is just a little over 6ft. Crazy!! Our goal is to have 9 ft ceilings all away across the house. Crossing our fingers it works. But before we can try to lift the work we've quite a bit of work to do first.
Anyways to insert the beams Kory knocked a few bricks out of the girls room that the beam will be going through.
He then had to knock a whole out in all the interior walls also to allow the beam to run from one end of the house to the other.
We had a total of 4 walls we knocked holes in. Once the holes were complete with a little help from a neighbor and the skid steer we were able to slide the beams all the way through the house.
We actually had to put a piece of wood under the beam by the front door to allow us to be able to open the front door. Funny!
Once the beams were in it was time to start knocking out walls!
This was the boys room.
After the boys room was done. Kory cut the bricks into the girls room that we needed to take down.
Wall between laundry room and girls room.
Once the girls room was done we carefully took down the laundry rooms wall. These walls we had be super, duper careful with. We have the electrical box, water lines, washer & dryer hook ups and the water heater stuff in these walls. It took us a full day just working this one room.
But finally it was complete!
Then came the fun part....Not!!!
The foundation had sagged, lots in the front of the house and the cement was all cracked. The floor was not at the same level but off up to 2 inches depending on where you were at. To fix this, Kory pulled out the wet cement saw and cut away. The kids and I then came behind him with the sledge hammer to crack it into carrying sized pieces. We then threw it into the skid steer bucket where Kory would then empty it into the back of the trailer. We lost count of how many times he had to empty the skid steer scoop or the trailer. We ended up taking out more than what we originally had thought. But we figured we might as well do it right while the house was torn apart. We do NOT want to ever have to do this again!! Almost the entire front part of my house was missing!
Before we could pour concrete we had to dig up that indoor trench for the future water line. Cody Goodfellow an awesome friend brought his backhoe over and dug the line from the house to the city hook up for us. Saving us lots of shovel time. Kory's brother Kale from Nebraska was visiting for the holidays and came out to help too.
We had a little accident when the back hoe hit the existing sewer line. Oops. No bathroom breaks or water usage until Kory could fix it. Of course the sewer line was not where it should have been like everything else in this house.
Oh my goodness my house!!
After a day or two of laying re-bar and setting the cement forms the big day finally arrived. It was time to pour our new floors.
The cement truck came and immediately got caught up in our over grown tree.
Oops!
A little chain saw action and the truck was freed.
Thank goodness Bro. Bradshaw (owes his own concrete business) was here helping us. We had a bit of a blow out in the middle and he was able to help us rescue our big project.
Brayden sure loves to help us with these projects.
With the blowout we had it became a blessing in disguise that we ran out of concrete to finish the whole job. So why did we have the blow out??? Let me tell you! Many, many years ago the previous owner noticed that his house was shifting and his foundation was I guess failing. So he did a few things trying to repair it or stop it from continuing to happen but it didn't work. So out of frustration he dug a huge hole right in front of the house (where the problem was) and dumped supposedly 4 yards of concrete. 4 yards just happens to be about the same amount of concrete we used this day for filling in the existing cement block footings, 2 bedrooms and a laundry room. That is a ton of concrete. So when we were forming the rooms we had a hard time with the stakes because just 6 inches below the dirt we kept hitting where this 4 yards of concrete was dumped. Not knowing exactly what to do Kory just put more stakes in closer together than what he would have normally done. Well it didn't work. The forms didn't stay straight and with the weight of this new fresh wet concrete it bulged the boards out about 4 inches. Yikes! For the life of us we could not get any stakes to work so in the end Kory pushed the bucket of the skid steer right up against the form to hold it in place. It's not perfect but it's not out 4 inches either.
A few days later cement truck #2 came back to let us finish the job. We were able to pour our new front porch walkway and also the trenches we had inside of the house.
How did we get the cement in the house? We used our wheel barrel of course. We let the cement truck fill her up and we pushed her through the house.
Just follow the trail she left.
I was the most excited for this part right here. This is my bedroom. For months now I have been living with a dang 6 inch trench running through my room into the bathroom/closet. It's tripped me, I've fallen into it. I've scraped my toes on it. I hate stepping in dirt with no shoes inside my bedroom so trying to avoid it I've overstepped and ran into the dang wall to many times to count. Not to mention the piles of dirt I still have in it. It's been miserable. I've hated it! And I am so, so happy that most of it is finally gone!
Our front porch. Don't mind my husbands flaying arms. Not sure what he was doing and he had no idea I was taking a picture.
I think this was the last time we will need a cement truck. Woo Hoo!
Oh my goodness what a week it's been. We had wonderful Christmas Day! But the next morning on Dec 26th we packed up all the rooms and moved everyone out including the laundry room. It then took us several days to knock out the walls and several more days to get ready for our new concrete. Our final cement truck came on Tuesday Jan 5th. It took us 10 days to do all this. But now it's done. Next step is to raise the roof!
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