My own personal mini earthquake in slow motion
Today was the day the house actually got leveled. I thought while that was being done I'd catch up on projects and try and keep busy. I didn't expect to find my shoulders up to my ears and my stomach in knots. What happened was so nerve wrecking it took a few hours to unwind when it was over.
House leveling is like root canal for the house, I think. The longer you put it off, the worse it will be. It's rough. I pictured several men under the house all working the jacks at the same time and seeing a few cracks appear and then it would be over in a few minutes. What actually happened took 2.5 hours. It was a slow and steady process of measuring a fraction of an inch here and there and signaling the men under the house to slowly lift.
Door frames looked crooked and slowly straightened out. The house moaned and groaned a bit. The floors moved but barely, it was a very strange sensation. Slow and tiny increments. The walls began to crack in pretty ways. The designs reminded me of Chinese watercolor drawings on rice paper. They just appeared and kept going. Some parts that had cracked fused together again. Then there was what sounded like a bullet piercing steel and the cat's water bowl popped from the floor and made a ringing sound. A joist had popped! UGH! Actually it turned out the joist had cracked but not broken. It would be sistered since the area it was now being supported with additional piers and beams. That was not supposed to happen and I was disappointed that this company was not what I had expected.
The walls and floors began to talk. They told the workmen that there had been water damage done to the kitchen floor and perhaps that is why plywood was put down and black and white tile over it. Nothing too bad because it could not be seen underneath or felt on top. The floor under the bathroom said it had also sustained some water damage at one point. The owner of the house at the time had that wood treated and varnished so it was stable.
The walls showed their strength and the house proved itself by working so well with the adjustments. I had to walk around with a pencil and mark and date the end of cracks. There will be settling over the next few months and we'll be living with cracks for awhile. Cracks are as close as you can get to getting walls to talk. Gavindo spoke of wood having memory. I thought about houses in the hood being gutted and how it always seemed sad to me even though it is a fresh start and you have this perfect, new, clean house when you are done. But those houses feel a bit weird to me, new inside and all the memory is wiped out. I like the idea of living in a place that has memory. Nothing historically significant happened there but then at the same time everything historically significant did. I just always find the passing of time and people something so interesting, (this is why Jimmy Corrigan appeals to me). People have moved in and out of the place since 1949.
*I realize that I would never want to live in a house that was made with slab foundation. Pier beam and wood frame seem the way to go. Easy to fix. Also, nothing made of brick. When it decides to crack...eesh
House leveling is like root canal for the house, I think. The longer you put it off, the worse it will be. It's rough. I pictured several men under the house all working the jacks at the same time and seeing a few cracks appear and then it would be over in a few minutes. What actually happened took 2.5 hours. It was a slow and steady process of measuring a fraction of an inch here and there and signaling the men under the house to slowly lift.
Door frames looked crooked and slowly straightened out. The house moaned and groaned a bit. The floors moved but barely, it was a very strange sensation. Slow and tiny increments. The walls began to crack in pretty ways. The designs reminded me of Chinese watercolor drawings on rice paper. They just appeared and kept going. Some parts that had cracked fused together again. Then there was what sounded like a bullet piercing steel and the cat's water bowl popped from the floor and made a ringing sound. A joist had popped! UGH! Actually it turned out the joist had cracked but not broken. It would be sistered since the area it was now being supported with additional piers and beams. That was not supposed to happen and I was disappointed that this company was not what I had expected.
The walls and floors began to talk. They told the workmen that there had been water damage done to the kitchen floor and perhaps that is why plywood was put down and black and white tile over it. Nothing too bad because it could not be seen underneath or felt on top. The floor under the bathroom said it had also sustained some water damage at one point. The owner of the house at the time had that wood treated and varnished so it was stable.
The walls showed their strength and the house proved itself by working so well with the adjustments. I had to walk around with a pencil and mark and date the end of cracks. There will be settling over the next few months and we'll be living with cracks for awhile. Cracks are as close as you can get to getting walls to talk. Gavindo spoke of wood having memory. I thought about houses in the hood being gutted and how it always seemed sad to me even though it is a fresh start and you have this perfect, new, clean house when you are done. But those houses feel a bit weird to me, new inside and all the memory is wiped out. I like the idea of living in a place that has memory. Nothing historically significant happened there but then at the same time everything historically significant did. I just always find the passing of time and people something so interesting, (this is why Jimmy Corrigan appeals to me). People have moved in and out of the place since 1949.
*I realize that I would never want to live in a house that was made with slab foundation. Pier beam and wood frame seem the way to go. Easy to fix. Also, nothing made of brick. When it decides to crack...eesh
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