The weather was beautiful over the weekend - spring has definitely sprung. The garden is starting to bloom, check out the photo of our Magnolia tree. The 5 of us spent Easter Sunday doing some yard work; well 3 of us worked and 2 of us slept! Chloe did manage to do some homework after her nap but then it blew into the lake! A very nice man in a kayak retrieved it for her on his way past. Ian and Kyle relocated the grape arbor to get it out of the way of construction and Kyle and I trained the climbing roses to climb their arbor.
Construction continues - the central beam was removed and a temporary wall was installed to hold up the rest of the house. Demolition was also continuing on the fireplace, it was reduced to a small pile of rubble. The poor guy had to carry it all out by had, they filled up two 8 ton dumpsters with bricks and concrete!
It turns out that when a house is built by the owner (in the 1950's anyway) that you can be creative with your construction techniques. The front steps were solid concrete! And in the house, the upper floor support posts holding up the roof were just resting on the floor, there weren't any supports underneath on the lower floor bearing the weight! These all had to be added to bring the house up to code - see the huge beams in the pictures and the new support posts.
We also found the elusive sewer pipe - an excavation crew was out to relay the sewer line for the house, it was several feet away from where the city thought it was.
It turns out that when a house is built by the owner (in the 1950's anyway) that you can be creative with your construction techniques. The front steps were solid concrete! And in the house, the upper floor support posts holding up the roof were just resting on the floor, there weren't any supports underneath on the lower floor bearing the weight! These all had to be added to bring the house up to code - see the huge beams in the pictures and the new support posts.
We also found the elusive sewer pipe - an excavation crew was out to relay the sewer line for the house, it was several feet away from where the city thought it was.