Well, here is another case of you never know what you have until you start to strip things down. We knew from the beginning that the support posts for the porch were not on cement pilings the way they are required by code. So, the plan was to cut out the corners of the posts, support the porch temporarily, pour the pilings, then affix a new section of the post to the piling and the old post. Simple enough. The plan was to take off the fascia of the porch leave the frame, and re-work the rest of the porch to make it work.
As you can see from above, thats not what ended up happening. What happened was this - as the carpenters started to peel away the fascia, it was found that there were no corner support posts for the porch. Either they had rotted away inside the wood capping that was put on, or they were never there in the first place. No matter which way you slice it, we basically have to rip the whole porch down and start over. We are lucky in the sense that we will not have to re-support the deck, as that would have been really expensive, but everything else is going to have to start from scratch.....starting today.
These are the newly laid pilings. The sonotubes from Menards are 12" in diameter and 42" in the ground. This helps build a solid foundation for the posts that have to hold up to 100lbs per square feet of weight according to Chicago building code. When the carpenter starts to work on these he will put metal cleats on the footings and then nail the new 6x6 supports to the cleats.
Next up on the fun of peeling the onion is the back support wall on the east side of the house. I didnt take a picture of what this looked like beforehand, but lets just say it wasnt good. You can see where the temporary support is, and how the floors seems to stick out from the back of the house. Well, at some point in the history of this home the owner at that time decided to move the back of this wall out, and built a second supporting wall. Whatever lumber they used, its apparent they didnt treat it or seal it at all. When the carpenter got to it, the main support posts were rotted and barely supporting the structure. So.......we had to rip it apart and support it correctly. Guess what that means?? More concrete support for the back wall of the house.
The next bit of cement work that we had done while the cement truck was out on Friday was the rear stair area. This wing wall had to be re-done now because we had to re-support the back wall and the west support of that back wall sits on this wing wall. We had another piling put in on the east side for support as well, and now that these are dry, the carpenter will resume finishing the back of this structure as well.
Something is finished! The roof, it was finished on Thursday afternoon once the carpenter was able to re-connect the front part of the roof to the new ridge that was built to support the roof. Once that was done, the roofers took little more then 5 hours to get things completely shingled and get out of there. There was a heck of a mess inside the house from when they stripped the roof off (cedar shake shingles on the bottom) but now everything is all neat and tidy and ready to be flashed and insulated.
The steel beam wetn in over the weekend as well. I will have some pictures of that up tomorrow.
Today is correct the front porch and back of the house day. Also, IKEA is coming out to measure the kitchen to confirm our layout.
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