House Drama part 2

If you saw the earlier post called House Drama, then you would know how our foundation is not what it's supposed to be...as in it is sinking or has sunk or something like that.

This week included five days of digging and drilling 24 concrete piers around the house. It started off somewhat quiet...digging with shovels...6 workers...music playing in Spanish. 

The drama began to build on Tuesday when they brought out power equipment to begin to dig deeper and achieve the 12-foot depth required for each pier. The cement truck showed up, as well as, the dump truck and bobcat-type digger to haul away the massive pile of dirt in the street. There was a lot of noise (think lawn mower meets revving motorcycle) and people and craziness...oh, yeah and they hit one of the sprinkler lines too.  (To drown out the noise, I ended up baking banana bread, chocolate chip cookies and cutout sugar cookies...kitchen therapy!)

Wednesday started with a lot of noise as well and after being here for 30 minutes, there was knocking on the door and then ringing of the doorbell (about 5 times in a row). I ran to the door thinking something was wrong. It was. They had just cut the water main to the house. Luckily, I had just gotten out of the shower and gotten dressed minutes before the knock on the door!!! (I am so grateful I decided to procrastinate on the workout that morning and I wasn't doing laundry!) The drama heightened on Wednesday afternoon when the supervisor informed me they were going to need to break up part of the garage floor because there was not enough room on the outside of the house between the house and the a/c units or between the house and the pool equipment. Ok...so three holes in the garage floor. Well, it’s better than accidentally hitting the lines for the pool equipment. Then he said they needed to put in two more piers along the back of the house...and would need to break up the decking. (The decking we had put in to go around the pool and had it colored to match the rocks...oh no, no, no.) I took a deep breath. Ok...so I texted Matt to tell him we'll need to discuss the latest and told him he might want to consider working from home on Thursday. 

On Thursday, Matt worked from home and had a stroke of genius. What if they used the empty space under the stairs (along the back of the house) to put in the two piers instead of the breaking up the decking? I thought it was a brilliant idea! The supervisor said they could do it if they could have access to the inside of the house and remove the landing of the stairs. And so they did!! I'm sure it wasn't the easiest from a digging standpoint, but it saved us from trying to patch up the concrete decking after it was all done. So Thursday and Friday brought more jackhammering and loud noises, but at the end of the day, the staircase was put back together (the girls can get to their rooms), the piers had all been dug and cement had been poured in each. 

And now we wait. The concrete has to cure for 10 - 14 days and then the next round begins...stay tuned!

(In case you were wondering...yes, they used their microwave on the front lawn every day! LOL!)