surprise sunflowers

Two sunflowers popped up in the back yard.  When I cut briars and weeds down with the left-handed midget scythe, I left these two plants standing. I thought they might be sunflowers.  My guess is that one of the neighbors feeds the birds in the winter, and some critter buried or dropped seeds.  They are much bigger and healthier looking than the sunflowers that I planted.  Then again, they had a bit of a head start on the growing season.

sprouts

The sunflower seeds that I planted have sprouted.

They are growing....

and growing.

However, some insect has decided that the sunflowers I planted are very tasty.  I don't know what is eating them, but some of the smaller varieties that I planted are being hit hard and may not survive.

braced

We don't want an tigin to shift.  The walls need to be stable so they don't bow out or start to lean.  Each wall was braced to keep it as stable as possible.  The bracing will stay while we begin work to improve the foundation.

twins

As we were digging out the sand from under the house (the sand that was tossed under the house while the kitchen addition was dug out), we came across another Foss' Fruit Flavors bottle.  This one still had its label on; Lemon Extract.

I'm looking forward to displaying them at an tigin when the house is finished.  I was thinking of putting sea glass in the first one we found since it doesn't have a label. I'm not sure what I'll do with this one.  Perhaps leave it empty.

more bits and bobs to add to our skeleton

My brother, Bob, pointed out that it would be better if there was a size reference with all of the bone pictures I've taken.  So when I discovered some more bones while I was mowing, I decided to put the tape measure in the picture. The crumbled bones were actually a jaw bone with several teeth still in it.  Unfortunately, I set it on the barn floor while I was looking for the other bone that had been moved out of the way (because I had left that on the barn floor too).  Naturally while focused on looking, I forgot to not step on the jaw bone, so now I only have bone chips.  If you look carefully though, you can still identify the teeth.

blocked

Once the sills were level, each corner and nibbed scarf joint needed to be blocked and braced.  More stones were removed to allow for bigger supports.  Old stone piers were rebuilt to be more stable.  Chunks of the pines from the back yard along with cinder blocks were used as bases for supports.  Now an tigin gets to rest for a bit to let it resettle.  We may need to make some adjustments to keep it level.

when chainsaw meets nail

Under the nibbed scarf joint on the north wall of an tigin, the wall that was original but became the shared wall with the kitchen addition, was a support post. The post has been buried in the soil for 91 years and is still in great shape. It is solid and doesn't show any signs of rot or deterioration.  Martin raised the sill at the nibbed scarf joint to rebuild the support for the joint and to remove the post.  The post is buried so deeply that he couldn't get it to budge, so he decided to perform the delicate operation of taking the top of it off with a chainsaw without cutting into any of the support now holding up the joint.

He carefully checked for nails and asked me to double check.  Next he fired up the chainsaw and removed a 6 inch chunk, only to discover he needed to remove more.  The chainsaw was fired up again and Martin started to saw, but very quickly stopped since he hit the nail pictured above.  Once the offending nail was removed, another chunk of the support post came off.

When we dig the foundation we will be digging out the original support post. I'm curious as to the depth that it is buried.

Raising and leveling the house

If you are going to raise a house and level it, where do you start?  Martin took level readings.  The north east corner of the house was the highest spot and the south east corner was the lowest, (about 5 inches lower - more of a difference than we had first thought.)

To begin raising the sills, we had to have access under the sill.  Martin had the pleasure of hauling out the sledge hammer and knocking out a few stones.

  Raising a house is a slow, painstaking, hair-raising process.  Martin has been purchasing jacks for several months now.  He didn't buy a lot of jacks, but looked for ones that he wanted that were reasonably priced.  Cinder blocks were purchased in preparation for the work and old lumber was chunked up into blocks.

We started in the south east corner of the house because it was the lowest spot and needed to move the greatest distance.  A support piece was put across the corner and the level set up. Then set up a jack under  the nibbed scarf joint on the east wall.  Notice the sill is resting on the stone wall along this side of the house.

With many creaks and groans, the corner and side of the house were raised an inch and blocked to hold them in place.  I cannot begin to express the experience of being inside the house while it is being slowly lifted off of the supports it has rested on for 91 years.  The house complained and complained loudly.  It creaked and groaned and popped.  Standing inside, it is hard not to imagine the whole thing collapsing in on top of you.  I spent the day holding my breath while sills went up and letting out big sighs of relief when nothing fell apart.

The next step was to rais the nibbed scarf joint along the south (front) wall of the house.

The sill used to be resting on the rock wall here.  By the end of the day there was a huge gap.

We moved on to the south west corner of the house and the joint along the west wall.  The whole time we were working Martin was constantly checking levels. To do that, we needed to close both the front and back doors. As the level of the house changed, the doors constantly complained. Every time we tried to close a door, it would creak and groan and, either it wouldn't latch, or it would latch and then we wouldn't be able to open it again.

As you can see there is now a gap between the sill and the stone wall.  As soon as the weight of the house was lifted off of the stone piers it had been resting on for nearly 100 years, the stone piers became very wobbly.  It felt like a magical balancing act that the house had stood for that length of time without any obvious problems.  At one point, while we were raising the north west corner of the house, the whole place wobbled. What a hair-raising experience.  There we were inside the house, slowly raising and blocking the corner, when the house wobbled and all we could think was that it was coming down and coming down on top of us.  Martin reacted quickly and slowly lowered the corner back into its original place.  Jacks were reset and the corner was successfully raised

sand dune is growing

We've removed all of the sand from where the kitchen addition was dug out.  Martin then wanted the dirt to be leveled, so we have spent two days digging the high spots.  We have about a quarter of the area left to dig to make the whole space under the house level.  All of the sand and soil has been added to this pile.  We are running out of room and we aren't sure what we are going to do with the sand/soil from digging out the basement.

This is the same pile of which I put pictures in under the post "giant sandbox". It grew a little.

Leveling the soil under the house

For those of you who have spent any time with Martin, seeing a knife stuck into a wall is the norm.  However, when Martin set up the laser level on the stone pier that had supported the carry beams which ran through the middle of an tigin (just like the other sills with nibbed scarf joints), he wanted to mark  a spot so he could recalibrate the level to the same place each time we used it.  Martin had a knife handy, but no pen, pencil, or marker, so the knife went into the wall and was our guide for several days of leveling.

Martin wants the ground under the house leveled.  We will be doing a fair amount of work walking around on it, we need to dig along the outside walls to see how deep the pier supports go, and eventually we will be digging out the partial basement.  (It looks like we will not be really raising the house, just supporting it while we put in better frost walls and we'll dig a partial basement instead of a full basement.)

Anyway the top layer of the dirt is 91 year old dead sod.  The roots still hold it together fairly well and, believe it or not, made it difficult to dig.  I was getting used to digging the sand, which is very easy to deal with. (For now, however, digging the basement in sand could be challenging since the walls will collapse in. Sand isn't known for holding its shape.)  We also have lots of roots from the lilac bushes that were at the front and side of this particular corner.

stronger support for the sill

Martin had temporarily supported the nibbed scarf joint of the sill under the north end of the house (the wall that was part of the kitchen addition).  Because we are planning on leveling the house, Martin needed to put in a sturdier base support for the joint.

Nibbed scarf joints are usually used in building wooden boats. They slip less than scarf joints and are stronger than butt joints.