foundation repour

finally got all the floors and beams ripped out... had to repour the foundations to level and square them off.. used the sand mix concrete about 52 bags later al the back three room foundations are finally poured.  this weekend will be laying out joists and putting down some floors then restudding out the walls so i will have someplace to wire and insulate.. more photos to come... this is what we have so far.. after the wonky joists were finally ripped out...

Have you or will you take precautions about moisture?

so far pouring out on top of the existing foudations taking out and replacing the old hand hewed rotted beams have helped.. it has a concrete sort of sidewalk poured around the back of the house..someone had put in all that concrete making it almost level with the foundations... we raised them up about six inches.. got the new sills and beams up off the ground better.. i plan on putting down plastic everywhere bringing it up onto the sides of the house whereever possible and caulking it... i may tape all the other areas to keep out any residual moisture.. but thus far our little repour has helped so  much it used to get wet under the floor the dirt around the inside of the foundations and its now staying dry even the new concrete is staying really dry.. i put down a roll of that foam tape stuff and then put a sort of metal tar paper tape on the bottom of the new joists and sills to prevent them from touching the concrete directly.. its been rough but its all done now..  we added about six joists the other day and its coming out level within the bubble..   (mostly.) but so much more level then these old floors we ripped out ever were..    here are a few photos of the new joists we put in ...   i got a fedw photos before we put in the foam tape and stuff.. just tyring out the new sills... building this house from the inside out..  the flat 2x4's you see on the wall are just there for moral support so i could lift things up. i have to put down plywood now and then stud out the walls on top of it to give me some space to insulate and wire ... these rooms were up and down boards several layers no airspace  int he addition so studding it out will make it so much more sound and sturdy...  

you can see my box beam i built out to hold up the roof its doing pretty good thus far... allowed us to remove the interior walls of this room. .. opening up what was three rooms into one...  

thought i would post some updates..

Wow...that is a lot of work, and you are doing well at it. Keep us posted.

(I am in the midst of a similar project and its tiring, but exciting)

here is the rest of the photos dont know if you saw them in my other post..   got lots more done since the repour of the foundation... :-)   just when i think i am DONE and am too tired i go back up there and ITS ON. i get excited about this house once again ..   https://permies.com/t/90213/permaculture-projects/remodel-photos

michael reace wrote:here is the rest of the photos dont know if you saw them in my other post..   got lots more done since the repour of the foundation... :-)   just when i think i am DONE and am too tired i go back up there and ITS ON. i get excited about this house once again ..   https://permies.com/t/90213/permaculture-projects/remodel-photos

I wish I had energy. I have cancer and can barely get out of my own shadow, but after 18 months of waiting for treatment, I think I am almost there. I start Wednesday.


It has been kind of a catch 22 in that I have not been able to do much for work, putting us behind financially, but its been a good thing as well. We plan to move into my Grandmother's old house reducing our living expenses, and renting our current house out. Its all paid for, so we plan to use the rental income to pay for the renovation. In the end we should end up with two nice homes increasing our net value overall.


Some have written my Grandmother's House off, but like you are doing, I think a wee bit of work will really make a difference in getting the old home nice again.

oh man.. good luck with the health issues. I hate to hear that, myself the reason I am doing all this work is due to being disabled about 18 yrs ago, and trying to survive on a small ss disability check.. i had an undiagnosed illness spring up.. it lasted 7 yrs, vomiting several times a day. pain between the shoulder blades and my neck area.. long story short. at 109 lbs and with my skin feeling like crepe paper i was finally to see a surgeon that my cousin was dating. he ran all the usual tests and was about to dismiss me. i had been to dozens of other specialists thru the years only to get hiv and drug tests ran.. no one was listening to me. I was about to be dismissed by this latest surgeon when i told him that i felt the autopsy would tell the tale and i begged him to cut me open and look around.. to look again at my tests and if he found even the most remotest thing out of the ordinary. he spent 20 minutes looking thru paperwork and finally looked up and said that my gallbladder was hyper reactive that it dumped 98 to 100 percent of its bile no matter if i ate a piece of bread or if i ate a greasy burger. he sent me home to keep a food diary, so far all i could eat for 7 yrs was tilapia white fish, white rice, wheat cereal with rice milk and not a bite of anything else. or i threw up.. anyways i had the gallbladder removed it was infected with e coli , turns out my well water had an underground river somewhere flowing into it from all the farms around.. i had a 49 acre farm with a mortgage, and had a well drilled several years earlier.. removing the gb saved me, yet i had a surgery several years prior to prevent vomiting and reflux called a nissen fundoplication..it had made things worse, but at the time i would have let them cut off my right arm if i knew it would make me stop vomiting. .. instead it left me dry heaving on the bathroom floor several times a day for the next two years..you're not able to vomit after the surgery.. just a lil scraping away of the stomach from the liver and spleen moving the organ into the chest cavity and twisting it around the esophagus.. the side effects were greatly downplayed and i am now left with terrible IBS..  surviving on my SS disability has been difficult, i look very able bodied til you consider i have an uncontrollable illness.. that working on a schedule is impossible.  the move to the new lil house has been so i can rent out my current house, which is not paid for, but i can rent it out for nearly three times the mortgage..  my new lil house is paid for, and i have a teensy budget.. like 8 grand to buy materials, so far its come in pretty good under budget.. i will run out at some point and should have a teensy bit of credit card debt.. but hopefully we will get good renters and will be able to make some investment funds maybe find a lil flip house or get a couple of lil crack houses and become slum lords.. (sigh) i gotta quit saying crack houses.. my mama says to call them cottages.. but i look at the slums of kingsport tn.. where houses can be had for 15 grand and a solid 550.00 a month made with a few upgrades and paint..  I wish you the best, determination is what keeps us going.  the grandmother's house sounds exciting, having a project can really make a difference in our lives. I get frustrated not being able to leave the house for about 5 hours after i wake up.. i'm in my office (bathroom) up until noon. somedays i get so tired i think i can't do another thing but once i get up to the lil house i am right back to where i was when we first bought it. ready and raring to go.. it's been seven months but im almost to the point of demoing  the exterior walls and rewiring and insulating. with all the window openings in the house there won't be too much sheetrock to finish..  will have to post some photos of your house once you get going on it..   did i mention that  i have been trying to fool the building inspector just didnt want him to know we ripped out so much of the structure..  otherwise i would have had to get a building permit and brought the whole house up to code.. (sigh).. sooo what i did was to take some distilled white vinegar, boil it, then wash some steel wool rinse and cut it up in the boiling vinegar.  add a tiny bit of baking soda.. makes a mini volcano but once it settles down it makes a nice rust stain, after adding a bit of soot from the chimney, i was able to age and stain up every piece of new wood we added to the house, it looks exactly like the old wood that has been there.. looks like some work was maybe done in the 60's you cannot tell i did a thing.. and it has aged up like the rest of the 100 year old wood..  thus far everyone that has seen it thinks it will work they cannot tell i have replaced a single joist. even the nails rusted from the vinegar and the joist hangers kinda patined up.. i have managed to re use most of the wood i took up, the pieces that were not in bad condition.. some of this wood was so stiff you couldn't hardly saw thru it..  this old hard wood was amazing.. ok i will quit telling you my life story now.. will keep posting and look forward to seeing your posts as well and seeing how your doing. keep on keeping on my friend you will get thru these health problems eventually.. sometimes getting into these old houses is just the medicine we need.  

some more updates to the little house..

It's coming along nicely.  Good job!

That's quite a big project. It looks like you working the worst of it behind you. My first self-built home was a remodel to start and many of your images could have come directly from mine, so I feel for you. Actually I look back fondly at those days when it seemed normal to bring the chainsaw in the house for a quick demo of a tricky spot, lol!
Good project great  job.
I'll keep watching with enthusiasm.
Thanks for sharing
Brian  
Sorry about the typo "goof" instead of "good" ty Pearl

its been over a year foundations are done plastic under the floor . new gutters and its staying dry...  i used PRICE GUTTERING in kingsport tn... they did a terrible job ive been after then for nearly 8 months to finish the flashing job i paid 250.00 for but they keep putting me off.. once corner of my house has no flashing and the rain just runs back under the roof..  going to have to hire Holtzclaw guttering company to redo most of the gutter install..  we have completed all the joists... torn out the rest of the sheetrock and the floors are all down in those three back rooms.. ended up having to put 16 foot 2x10's in the ceiling joists upstairs it was held up by whittled down beams with 2x4's holding up the upstairs wood floors. all the sagging and bouncy castle is now gone from upstairs and she feels solid... i just completed the new pex water lines and the sewer pipes and drains are all ran inside... we got our permits for the sewer and electrical r a few weeks ago...  staying home today to call a fella who wors for AEP to see how much he charges to hook up our outside connect for the new power lines and meter box.... its the only thing i wont attempt myself... but we should be able to run new electrical soon maybe in a few weeks...  the little house has worn us out.. but its been worth it... its a shame to hire someone for gutters and have it not go as planned. i am ordering some large magnets for both our cars to advertise their incompetence around town as we do a lot of traveling locally... also will be doing the online reviews for their business as i don't want anyone else to get taken by this company.. it would have een much cheaper for them to just come finish the corner of flashing for me but i guess they will soon find this out as summer is here and people will be calling for new gutters after the bad winter we had this year...  posting some photos of the improvements  hoping to be in this house by the end of this year if all goes well...   thanks for taking this journey with me..

some photos

a few more photos

a few photos of the plumbing .. sewer and pex pipes

some of the photos i posted was during the plumbing reno.. i didnt take enough photos of the AFTER project.   its my first time running sewer pipes it was definitely a learning curve i did go back and alter a few of the pex lines. i ordered a new side inlet water heater for under the counter next to the sink. that is all that is left to have the plumbing finished, havent drilled out the vent pipe holes thru the roof yet until i get the inspector up there to sign off and approve it ...   this house never had a single vent pipe in its life... its been interesting... that is for sure..

some photos of the bad job Price Guttering did on my gutter install.. they put up the gutters before attempting to install part of my flashing i paid for...  paid them 250.00 bucks took six months for them to come and redo part of the flashing the whole corner of the house has yet to get flashing and the thin metal they attempted to put up there just sends water back up under the roof and does not over hang the gutter itself...  

more of the bad flashing job from Price Guttering kingsport tn