Well, right about....now....
The Gut and Gumbo party was like the easy picking part of the demolition process, there was actually more demolition, along with with some ad hoc carpentry and building to do as well.
What we needed to to do was a careful deconstruction of the structure, all the while making sure the place didn't fall over on us. My friend (and former boss) Albert (who I mentioned in a previous post) and his crew came onto the job and started meticulously taking apart framing members, sawing floors, and taking down the back of the house, which was in danger of collapse.
The reason I hired Albert and George is that I know their work (I used to do it!), they are professionals of the first rate, always have an eye for material and cost-efficiency, and love saving old pieces of a structure or the tiniest piece of wood. Albert is so meticulous that we've had to take pieces away from him, saying: "Albert, it's beyond repair, we can't use it." But like that scene in the Abyss, Albert never gives up on anything.
It's also sometimes like this: "It's still good, it's still good!"
It's not that Albert's (just) stubborn, he's just an incredibly smart builder. He has a lot of experience saving houses that most have written off, and I knew that he'd love working on this project.
Simultaneously, the termite eaten and rotten sils of the house needed to be replaced, so Albert's crew also took on this job. Most houses that were built in New Orleans in the last 300 years have a problem with termites. And boy do they love to eat. We needed to make sure to carefully inspect the sils and make sure to replace ones that were beyond repair, as the entire house sits on them, which in turn, sit on the house's piers. In the old days, they didn't have current treatment processes, so when these old, thick pieces of lumber got wet (as humidity and rainfall are heavy here), termites had a feast.
Needless to say, the foundation was not that pretty, almost every piece of sil had to be replaced. That meant we had to lift up the whole house ever so slightly, tear out the sils, and replace them. Section by section, piece by piece, that's exactly what happened.
Tah-Dah! House levitation!
This process was relatively quick, but it was one of the most important things to assure that the house was going to be on a solid foundation. At the same time, this also allowed us to properly level and shore the house.
These are some of the new sils that were put in place. Although not pictured, after all the sils were completed, the house was lifted slightly again in order to place termite-shields between the piers and the sils. The sils themselves are also pressure-treated to prevent rot and termites from eating them.
Inside the house, a big decision had to be made. The house had old, pine floors throughout the house in various states of disrepair. Some of them were still a little shiny, some had been gobbled up by termites. Albert and I went back and forth on whether we should leave the good parts, tear up the bad and build around them, or just tear up everything and see what we could save. Like Albert, I and my parents wanted to save these old, beautiful floors. So, we decided to gingerly cut out every floor board, de-nail and sort them, and store them so as to put them back in as the finished floor.
We got the good wood out, and also found some other sources of flooring on-site (you'll have to wait to see what it is and the finished product).
More to come later!
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