Okay, it has been a while since the last update so let me get everyone up to date. My contractor’s father passed away unexpectedly. This was a great loss for all of us as we knew him well, he was a grand old English Gentlemen. The service was a beautiful celebration of his life which helped to medigate our sadness at his passing. So needless to say our friends loss is obviously more important then anything in my kitchen, we can wait as long as needed before she can come back to work.
I have started cutting the trim moulding I will be using above the backsplash tile and should be mounting it in one area of the countertop soon. I also replaced the one combo unit light switch and outlet, as seen in one of the last photo of the last blog post, and installed a separate outlet and light switch in a two gang connection box. This was done because the wiring in this portion of the house is only two wire and did not support the ground wire outlet that was on the old combo unit.
On another note, my old house foundation is crumbling in certain places, so bad so that the siding on one portion of the back wall is now sagging and showing gaps. Unfortunately this is not uncommon in this area of town. Back in the day, they used to use beach sand in the concrete mix, which degrades over time and the concrete breaks down. I have made several calls to foundation repair contractors and structural engineers to determine if the old foundation was properly installed to support the house. One contractor thought the addition to the back of the house did not have enough foundation to support the house and suspected that it might be adding to the premature foundation failure. Soooooo, who knows, after getting more recommendations, I may have to start a new blog on my foundation repair :o(
10 comments so far
PaBull
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694 posts in 5480 days
posted 11-19-2008 08:30 AM
Sorry to hear about your contractors father. And sorry to hear about your foundation. It was nice to see the houses you posted elsewhere.
dustygirl
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321 posts in 5320 days
posted 11-19-2008 03:54 PM
Foundation work.I feel for ya.A friend of mine had some done and it cost him mega bucks and hours and hours of contracted work.And that was just for leaking walls not crumbling ones.
-- Dustygirl Hastings,Ont. Life is too short to sit around doing nothing
PaBull
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694 posts in 5480 days
posted 11-19-2008 05:46 PM
DustyGirl, I don’t think Pat needs to hear more negative news. lol.
But you are correct, the hardest thing to replace on a house is the foundation.
dustygirl
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321 posts in 5320 days
posted 11-19-2008 11:25 PM
Sorry Pat I didn’t mean to sound so negative.I get carried away sometimes.
-- Dustygirl Hastings,Ont. Life is too short to sit around doing nothing
3fingerpat
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86 posts in 5414 days
posted 11-20-2008 12:31 AM
Dusty, no apology necessary, I took your comments in the manner in which you gave them, which was with no negativity at all. I know you meant well in your comments to inform me, not to be negative in any way.
One of the foundation repair companies came by today and made us feel a whole lot better. Seems the newer foundation that is having the blow out problem is being caused by rusted out foundation bolts. So it looks like the installer of the addition used inferior material. Even though they recommended we replace the whole original foundation, they also recommended only doing spot repairs on the new foundation. So at least there’s something to look on the bright side about. We are still waiting for a few more bids over the next two days and the structural engineer is coming over shortly.
We do expect that this is going to cost somewhere in the area of $20-35k, but what are you going to do? Can’t mope around about it, just get r done and move on.
PaBull
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694 posts in 5480 days
posted 11-20-2008 02:06 AM
I am glad you look at it this way, Pat.
dustygirl
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321 posts in 5320 days
posted 11-20-2008 04:24 PM
I’m glad too Pat.Good luck.
-- Dustygirl Hastings,Ont. Life is too short to sit around doing nothing
3fingerpat
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86 posts in 5414 days
posted 11-21-2008 07:13 AM
Thanks, we have one more contractor inspection to go tomorrow and then we will decide on what action to take. Already getting conflicting information from several foundation contractors and the structural engineer, but that was to be expected. Comments we received have been from “I won’t work on that, it’s to bad” to “don’t worry you will be able to sleep tonight, it’s not that bad”.
PaBull
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694 posts in 5480 days
posted 11-25-2008 02:21 AM
Pat, get the good and the bad, look at all the facts, see who you think you trust and make a decision. The good thing is you can hide an ugly patched up foundation.
Good luck.
hardwoodflooring
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68 posts in 5024 days
posted 09-20-2009 05:34 PM
take some pictures of it. Sorry to hear about he contractor’s father.