The Big Dig ...

I knew it had been a while since I posted. I just didn't realize it had been a month! It's probably because there hasn't been a lot going on.

We had a crew here a few weeks ago, but then they got called to another job and work came to a screeching halt. However, I am happy to say the boys are back and they brought friends and things are now humming along nicely.

So what's up? Well, for the last two days we have had five brave souls (six yesterday) worming around under our house in the crawl space. I should clarify I am using the term loosely. I'm not sure if it can really be defined as a crawl space if you can't actually crawl around.

As mentioned previously the crooked cottage sits on a block foundation with a dirt floor underneath. Unfortunately whoever did the foundation decided just to back fill it with whatever they had excavated in the first place. Very lazy. Not very smart. This made it almost impossible for anyone to get under the building to do any repair work (which is very necessary).

Enter our boys. Or rather I should say Advanced Basement System's boys. So far they have been great. They have been digging out our crawl space literally bucket by bucket in order to create a workable area. They have been building forms and pouring foundations and later in the week will be installing jack posts to lift back up those areas of our house that are lacking in support.

Perhaps most importantly they are preparing a footing so a mason can come and install a six foot length of the foundation wall that appears to be missing. That's right, when they starting their dig a few weeks ago they discovered that there is actually an appreciable length of foundation that just doesn't exist. Coincidentally this is in the area of the cottage with the biggest sag.

Needless to say this is very exciting. By the end of the week our cottage will not only be structurally sound, but with the floors and walls being made less crooked we can start all the fun, aesthetic parts of the reno like new windows, new floors ...

While digging the crew also found a few other things of interest, though not quite as disturbing as the lack of foundation (unless you're like my sister and insist that there is a body under here somewhere to go with the shoes ...)

What lies beneath ...

That's four shoes, one teeny tiny doll shoe, three pieces of pottery (all from the same, very old tea cup) and a bottle.

Amongst the TONS of beach rock (which we are reclaiming for landscaping) there have also been some funky fossils. This rock, though hard to tell in the picture, looks like it might be the remains of some birds. There are what appear to be dozens of small bones and a skull (in the upper right corner).