Meadow Mice

There is a children's story about the meadow mice who had to scurry around in the fall to prepare for winter because they played all summer. It is beginning to feel like that around here,except that we didn't play all summer instead of gathering food and supplies; we're just running out of summertime. In addition to the garden and baby, This Old House proves to have hidden challenges lurking in every corner that won't settle and every electrical box (or lack thereof). We have had lots of help from our families. Luckily Anna's dad spent all spring cutting his firewood so he is ready for winter at his house and can help us scurry around ours. And Vince's dad retired recently, making it possible to fly all the way out here twice in one summer to work without stopping, it seems.
We have been re-roofing, preserving vegetables, and preparing for insulation, among other wintertime necessities. Late summer is the time for preserving and we have been learning new recipes and strategies for stretching our summer produce into the winter months.
Vince and Drew making hot sauce and tomato sauce in the "outdoor cooking area."


We learned our lesson last year and this year will store onions and potatoes in a cool, dark place with no chance of freezing.

This Old House Part II: lowering a home and hydronic heating

The house lifters came back on August 3rd to lower the house. They lifted the house just enough to remove a couple blocks of wood and lowered the I-beam back onto the cribbing and repeated until the house sat onto the new foundation. In the process the owner pulled a muscle in his back and was unable to move all of the heavy wood and jacks. Wade and Dad helped move all of the material out from under the house.

We put plywood, roofing felt and stucco mesh on the lower level so that we can dress up the foundation in the future. The corners of the house do not rest on the foundation at this point. The wood has memory of when it sat on the posts and the middle of each wall must have sunk in a little. The house lifter warned us of this common occurrence and that most of our windows and doors will not close properly. I am going to give the house a chance to settle before straightening out door jambs and windows.

In the future the lower floor will be heated with radiant heat. We put down 4 inches of sand as a base, then a layer of plastic as a vapor barrier. Over the plastic we installed 2 inch rigid foam for insulation and welded wire mesh to tie the tubing to. The tubing will carry hot water to heat the floor that will be poured the next day.

The concrete showed up on time and by the end of the day we had a floor and dry space to store all of our stuff that doesn't fit in a small house. Now we have to make the house weather tight and insulated.

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Pieter was born Aug. 2nd. He has been wonderful and we are so thankful for his health and big personality. At five weeks old, he only dreams of eating veggies, but would like everyone else to! Although his arrival has hindered our ability to sell at the farmer's market, we are still harvesting late summer and fall vegetables. Vince has been busy grubbing potatoes, drying onions and gladiola bulbs and weeding the tomato, cucumber and pumpkin jungle. The hot weather made a big difference for the tomatoes and pumpkins this year and the strawberries are still producing. We have managed to can some green beans, mom has made many blackberry and strawberry pies, and we are anticipating tomato sauce and pickles, but haven't gotten that far yet.
We did make it to one more Mukilteo market when Pieter was two weeks old, thanks to the help of Mom, Laura, and Aunt Theresa.

This Old House Part I: a foundation under an existing building

The house lifters showed up the day before and dug out two pits under the house in order to set up the cribbing at the same height of the future basement floor. The next day they brought their equipment to set the beams under the house. This truck is as old as I am but the owner and his employee are efficient with the rigging and A-frame on this specialized truck.

The truck had an axillary motor and hydraulic pump. Four lines came from the pump to each jack that was set on each stack of cribbing. Each time they set the jacks, they fired up the pump and lifted the house about sixteen inches. After each stroke of the jack, they added cribbing, lowered the house to the additional cribbing and reset the jacks. They lifted the house about 5 feet.
The excavators were able to remove all of the soil from under the house. The dirt was easy to dig until the last foot or so. At that depth (about 6 feet) there is glacial till which is so hard that a pick used to dig by hand sometimes bounces right off with each swing.
Once the excavation was complete the foundation crew took over. In 1 day they framed up and poured the footer and then returned 2 days later to pour the walls. They were good at what they did; I think they spent more time waiting for an inspector than they spent actually framing and pouring the foundation. When we later framed walls on top of their work, I was impressed with how plumb, level and square their walls were. They did great work.

Chris and I are mapping out the location for the waste water drain and vents. This is difficult work; it takes a lot of planning. All of this work will be buried under the concrete floor and digging into the glacial till is a real backbreaking chore.
We finished the ground work and foundation just in time. My dad and brother Wade arrived and started to work right away. I came home from work and they had the sill plate on and were ready to frame. We spent a little over a day framing the walls up. We left a void in the top plate so the lifters could remove the steel I-beam but the rest was pretty standard wall framing.

That weekend we frustrated ourselves trying to replace rotten floor joists and adding additional joists to accommodate the span under the house. The house used to sit on two beams but now it will rest on one girder so we can have a larger open space on the bottom floor. We needed to get all of the floor structure in place, including the new beam, before the house was lowered. The lifters were scheduled to lower it that Monday.

It was Saturday evening and we were all ready for the house lifter to remove his wood and iron. We were getting a day without deadlines- what a relief. With perfect timing, Pieter was born on Sunday, August 2nd.