Google+ House Revivals: The Beach House is on It's New Pony Walls!

Friday, March 18, 2011

The Beach House is on It's New Pony Walls!

Okay, here is one last "beach house raising" post!  I feel like I need to apologize to my crafting peeps for not posting small projects for the last couple of weeks -- I promise I have several things "in the works", but this remodel has consumed the days recently, as things started picking up speed. 

This week the beach house was lowered onto the new pony walls!  If you are new to the House Revivals blog, you can read more about our beach house remodel here.


The picture above shows how the house looked early Tuesday morning.  It took the crew hours to prep for the final positioning of the house.  As you may know, we were raising the house nine feet.  This meant the house needed to go up nine feet three inches,  so my contractor and his crew would have room to build new pony walls.  Once the pony walls were up, the house could then be lowered that last three inches.


We had a mason come in last week to build a new foundation under the chimney and fireplace.  Remember how the fireplace looked last week?  It's so amazing that they were able to lift this chimney!


This is what the three inch "gap" looked like before the house was lowered.


This picture is from the north side of the house where the garage wing meets the house.  The garage was on a slab, while the house was on floor joists, which is why you see a break in the floor line.  The new upstairs floor will hang from the walls and from the new steel I-beam we showed here. 

When the house was finally lowered, it went down slowly and smoothly.  The east (left) side of the house was a fraction of an inch lower than the west side, as you can see in the picture below.  When the east side made contact with the new pony walls, I think I was expecting a huge crash and shaking or something, but it just made the gentlest tap!


They brought the west side of the house down, literally about a sixteenth of an inch a time!


 This control panel was the "nerve center" of the whole operation.


These hydraulic hoses went to the various jacks located under the house.


This process was incredible to watch.  Everyone knew their job, and the whole thing was like a perfectly choreographed ballet.  Okay, maybe that's a slight exaggeration.  One member of the house lifter's crew did make me laugh, as he would grab beams and joists and swing from ladder to scaffold to cribbing, as he worked!


For comparison's sake, here are some images of the beach front of the house, including the "before", the "concept" and the "progress to date".


Just for fun, I added grass and sky to the concept picture:)  So, what do you think?  The concept was not too far off from where reality is shaking out, wouldn't you agree?



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