Hello

[dixie girl]

I take terrible pictures with my phone and they were to big so my son had to reduce them and they didn't turn out very well. The pictures with the skinny porch posts is the back, the small porch is the side and the front is this last one with the wider posts. The fish scale in the gables doesn't show up in these pictures. The house still had its original white paint on it, well at least some of it. It was just to much to scrape all of it off and I felt it had to be painted as soon as possible because the years of exposure wasn't being kind to the clapboards. I had to hunt down enough replacements already. So I just went with white again. The original trim was black and I just didn't like it so I was talked into cranberry but it really looks more like brown to me. I wanted more red in it. The trim on the porch posts and gable windows are just white because I haven't had time to paint all that trim yet. First I have to figure out some sort of color I like and if I am going to try to change that cranberry into a more red color. I also have to change out that awful metal screen door. The back porch was half rotted off but my friends helped me save it. I hope we got enough of the bad out, no screens in the back anymore. The front ones need to be replaced when I can. This is Florida and we need screens here. It is so nice to have people who are nice enough not to tell me I am crazy for wanting to save this house.

[Don M]

Actually your house looks very nice, straight, square. Good standing seam roof. I can see why you wanted to save it. I'm sure it looked much worse before you painted it but it looks very solid from your photos. Great job so far!

[Wackyshack]

welcome to the madness and we too are looking forward to your adventure!!

[dixie girl]

The house is built on pillars and right in the middle of the right hand side it drops 6 inches and no one can figure out why. The first engineering company said it is because the fireplace is leaning it will be $25,000 to lift the house after you have the fireplace chimney torn down and repairs made and we aren't responsible for damages. The second engineering company said it was because the chimney is so heavy in our sandy soil it is sinking and needs to be repaired and slab jacked with cement there and new pillars installed and the old one slab jacked for $20,000. The third engineering company said he didn't think I would find it a very good investment and he would estimate it at around $30 to $50,000. To replace all the pillars and I would have to tear down the fireplace. On the right side of the house if you start at the front corner there is 6 feet then the fireplace 5 feet then another 6 feet. From the beginning of the fireplace the wall starts to slope gradually down to the lowest point just past where the dining room wall starts. Now it would seem to me if the fireplace indeed was pulling it down it would be the lowest in the area of the fireplace but it isn't. There is a large sewer pipe down the outside of the wall right next to the lowest spot that had ruptured and leaked possibly for a while before we fixed it. The fireplace is level. The pillar right where this leak occurred is not level. I believe the sandy soil got washed out from the leak below the pillar causing it to drop. The upstairs above this area is level. I think the upstairs would be pulled down to if it was the fireplace. The house sits to low for a very good inspection and I think it just needs to be jacked up with a couple new pillars put in to support it. I think a couple months of slow jacking and adding shims should tell the story. I started digging in the suspect area and I discovered a footing for a pillar that isn't there. I think they may have knocked it out to run a gas line for the fireplace from how it looks. The sister who inherited this house did not like it. She thought of it as a large storage container that she only tolerated when she had no choice.

[Don M]

It certainly sounds like you have a handle on what might be causing the problem. It can't hurt to try slowly jacking up that area & see what happens. Strange that the engineers have such varying ideas as to the cause of the problem. Do be very careful when jacking; the supports & jacks can kick out due to weight & pressure exerted. I have jacked small buildings on our property & even those were potentially dangerous.

[JacquieJet]

Dixie, lovely photos! Thanks for sharing! I can see why you felt drawn to the house. Looks like there is good potential there! Some nice features, too! Good for you.

[Powermuffin]

I agree that your house looks very nice! We paid a structural engineer $100 to look at our foundation before we bought our house. He didn't think it was necessary to do anything, but told us exactly what to do if we wanted to level the floors. We have one spot between the dining room and the sitting room where there was a heavy wood stove and that caused a 3" drop. I don't know if my husband will ever fix that, but it is on the list and we do know what the remedy is.

I think it would be worth your dollars to have a structural engineer look at the pillars.
Diane

[lovesickest]

Question: did any of the structural engineers consider the volume of contents that had previously been in the house, and their location with regards to the settling ?

Serious hoarding can create structural issues. This will depend a little on whether the contents were wet or dry. I remember a couple of episodes of Hoarders where the situation had been so extreme that the joists were damaged/broken, and others where the structure had been compromised due to leaking roofs, walls, or (ugh) animal urine and feces.

[dixie girl]

An 80 year old man visiting a neighbor from Maine went to the house and had a look at it. He used to work for a company that jacked up old places in New England (mostly stone) when he was a boy ( probably 40 since he called me young lady and I am 60. He said "See here now young lady, looks to me like they removed the original support and replaced it to far back and I am suspecting they did that to put in that 3x6 foot tile hearth. Now I can't get under there very far but I think it looks like they have some mighty big blocks of cement holding up that tile only supported by that there yellow pine flooring framework. That should have had a nice rock foundation. If you throw in some excess weight along the wall West of there from all Ms. W's books, I think you solved what caused the slope. Now the problem that I see is that the beam along there has had excess weight on it for better than half a century along with the fireplace weight and I think it has probably condensed both the sandy soil under it all and the beams that hold her up. You need to get that hearth broke out of there before it gets worse and you need to get that clapboard along the bottom of the wall off to have a look see at that beam." I guess I will be breaking out the hearth and taking off the clapboards really soon. I thought the tile was just on the floorboards I didn't know it was on cement slabs suspended from the floor. Interesting that none of the companies that looked at it mentioned it. I am going to try to find a structural engineer who doesn't work for a repair company to look at it after I break out the hearth so he can see what is going on. Just hope that hearth isn't to hard to break out.

[Don M]

Rent a good jack hammer; don't try to break it up with a chisel & sledge---my cement just laughed at that.!