House Project - Day 8: The real work begins

The remodeling project began in earnest today with the arrival of a backhoe and dumpster, a demolition crew, and plumber.

The plumber came by first at 7:30am, and disconnected the plumbing from the rear bump out. To do so, he also had to drain the radiator system. Around 8am, the backhoe showed up. They unloaded it from the flatbed in the street and drove it up the driveway. We had just recently had the driveway widened by replacing the concrete retaining wall with a stone block wall about 18 inches in, widening the driveway. It turns out, had we not done that (and it was Wendy's idea) there was no way the backhoe could have fit.

The backhoe immediately got to work digging up the cedar tree stump, as well as collapsing the old abandoned septic tank right next to the stump.

After the plumber completed his job at around 8:30am, the crew sealed off the kitchen doors that led to the rear bumpout, and sawed off the rear bumpout with a sawzall so that it could be pulled away from the rest of the house. There was no great precision in the process. It seemed as if they were relying on their knowledge of construction techniques and the fact that the rear bumpout probably share few if any common structural elements with the rest of the house, and could simply be ripped away.

Video of rear bumpout demolition: lower quality (~121KB), higher quality (~1.4MB)

When the demolition had been completed and most of the debris cleared away, they set about digging down to expose the corner of the bumpout foundation to see how far down it went. Code requires that foundation footings be at least 42" to support multi-story structures, and we had to determine if that was the case with the existing foundation. If it was 42" deep, we could retain the existing foundation along that length of the house.

Unfortunately, the bumpout foundation only extended about 12-15" below grade. This would not meet code, and thus had to be demolished as well.

For the rest of the day, they'll be digging out the hole for the foundation. More pics and an update later...

UPDATE (3:15pm): The foundation pit has been dug out, and the masons will arrive tomorrow to lay the concrete blocks that will form the new foundation. Then the project will wait until the town can inspect the foundation work and give the go ahead to proceed. They will then backfill around the foundation with the displaced dirt.

John, our contractor, says that the dirt is very good, with good drainage and stability, and should provide a good base for the foundation.

The act of ripping out the rear bumpout also caused some collateral damage to the plumbing and electrical: the cold water feed line to the kitchen sink, and an electrical wire to the kitchen overhead light were accidentally severed. The plumber rigged up a temporary cold water feed to the kitchen sink, and we'll just do without the overhead kitchen light for the remaining month that we are staying in the house.

Miranda checked out the work for the first time this afternoon. She was initially nonplussed by the change in scenery, but eventually pronounced good the day's work.