Last Summer, after a couple of months of Covid isolation, my wife started to get tired of me being around all the time, so, she told me to go fix up the farmhouse. What she really meant was “go rebuild the farmhouse!”. So, for the last year we have done almost nothing on the main house and we have been working on the Farmhouse. It may not look so bad in the picture, but, the more demo we did the more problems we found… We were, however, amazed at how well she had stood up to her 140 years… built in 1881.
There was so much to do that it was hard to figure where to start. We decided that the foundation and the furthest distance from the electrical panel would be good. With this logic we decided to work on the Laundry/bath in the back of the house.
Recently one of our neighbors, Jim, stopped by to introduce himself. Turns out he grew up in our farmhouse which his grandfather had purchased in 1915. He gave us a great history lesson about the property and one of the things we learned was that the Laundry/bath had been the original summer kitchen. In the summer it was too hot to cook indoors so there was a small annex on the back of the house for cooking in the summer.
It is hard to see because of the angle of the picture, but, the back of the summer kitchen had sunk about 6 inches. That was OK with me, it gave it a little bit of a “funhouse” feel, but Jean was not amused… She decided that the extra work to fix it up was going to be totally worth it… since I was the one that was going to have to do the work! So, I had a friend of mine (Thanks Claude!) help me with the additional demo and digging for a new foundation.
That may not sound like much, but, it was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done! Basically we had to demo all floors and subfloors, lift the section of the house, dig a 42 inch trench by hand, through mostly rock, underneath the house (since the house was hanging above us we couldn’t use digging equipment), pour concrete foundations and walls, set the house back down and reinforce the walls and ceiling structure.
Our Neighbor, Tim, helped me to raise the house and mix and pour the concrete floors. The outside is not finished yet, but the inside is looking pretty good! Tim’s carpenter friend Barry helped us to do the wood work… they have both been helping out ever since! Design and decorating credit goes to My wife, Jean.
We could have saved a ton of money and effort if we had just left it the way it was 🙂 Jeanie could have done some creative decorating!
The bathroom didn’t turn out so bad either… and it was really nice to have a functioning toilet in the house!
After this project she decided we needed to tear off the roof and rebuild it… but that is another story! Coming soon… or visit our instagram account for the most up to date posts at http://www.instagram.com/crazyfixerupper
This is fantastic! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks so much! It is lots of work but we are enjoying the process!