Those old floors...they practically lift themselves!! Ahhhh l'histoire des planchers !!

As you may remember from some earlier posts, we had ''discovered'' the original hard wood floors hidden under various layers of plywood and flooring. Unfortunately the floor in the kitchen was just too rough to save so I decided that I would lift it and replace with some new hard wood. As our intent is to resurface all the floors and stain them, I needed to find some unfinished hard wood flooring. Thank you to Dale Smearer from DJ Smearer Inc. Hardwood from Archibald; near Jacquet River, for coming through in a huge way! Dale has the most unique business tucked away in such a remote little place...will talk more about it in the next issue.

As I have never worked in hardwood before, I called upon the expertise of two hardwood flooring gurus...Larry Petersen and his brother Joey. Joe also has a lot of experience in renovating old homes as he has tackled a similar project on a similar house just down the hill. Looking for encouragement and bravado, I placed the call. ''Would we...'' they said, ''...no problem...those old floors practically lift themselves off...'' they chimed. A Friday night was chosen, right after work, a couple of coffees from Tim's and then a few beer for later. ''The coffee won't even have time to get cold it will go that fast...'' I was told. ''We will lift the old stuff, repair what needs to be repaired (several old trap doors that led to the cellar) and give a good start to laying down the new...'' they said with conviction. ''Won't it be hard pulling up the flooring with all the old nails?'' I so innocently asked. ''Nails...nails were too expensive back then!'' I was told. ''...they might have used one nail every four or five feet...'', ''...just wait...you will see!''. 

 We finally got going around 6:00 pm. By 10:30 I told them both to go home and rest up and we will give it another go in the morning! The hard wood turned out to be one inch thick by about three inches wide and most were as long as fourteen feet long!! What about the nails you ask? There were five inch nails doubled up every half foot or so!! It was deafening from the sound of the nails being forced to leave go their century long hold. One really cool thing though, was under the flooring the floor was lined with birch bark...the original vapour barrier! I decided to hold onto the the old flooring for a little project that I will describe at a later date. I must admit though that it was a great night...we drank a few beers and had even more laughs at the situation...''...lift themselves...''alright.

Ahhh...le fameux plancher de cuisine ! On croyait (et aurait bien aimé) pouvoir sauver le plancher de bois franc dans la cuisine. Malheureusement, celui-ci était vraiment en trop mauvais état.  Eric avait donc demandé à Larry Petersen et son frère Joey (qui ont fait cela très souvent) pour l'aider à l'enlever, ça devait prendre quelques heures pas plus... Mais, plus tard dans la soirée, Sarah et moi on a été appelé en renfort : « On a besoin du café, ça va prendre plus longtemps que prévu» !  Quand on est arrivée à la maison, on pouvait entendre de dehors les clous se lamenter !!!  Et des clous....j'en avais jamais vu autant sur un même morceau de planche !!

Nous sommes encore de retour / We are back ! Again !!

We are back! Again!!

We had to take a small break for the Christmas / New Year / beginning of flu season but we have some new (old....as the work has been continuing) pictures to share with you. The following are more pictures of demolition of plaster and yes....more steaming of wall paper!! Even though the work was progressing downstairs there was still some more prep work upstairs. We want to take the large bay window bedroom and downsize it to make an upstairs bathroom and this would enable us to increase the size of the adjoining bedroom to make it a bit larger for a master bedroom. In one of the photos you will see the ''mistake'' someone made a long time ago in measuring the stud and then scribbled it out...pretty cool.



Oui, comme Eric le dit si bien : nous sommes de retour après un court repos de Noël, Nouvel An, grippe...  Le travail dans notre maison avance très, très rapidement.  Voici quelques photos qui le prouve bien !! On vous promet (avec beaucoup, beaucoup de joie dans mon coeur ) que se sont les dernières photos «d'enlèvage» de tapisserie que vous allez voir...YÉÉÉ fini la tapisserie !!!!!!!

Before it gets better...it has to get worse...

Dans les semaines qui ont suivi la construction de notre rallonge, on s'aurait cru dans une vraie ruche !!  Les plombiers, les électriciens, les charpentiers...ça y allait !!  Je n'avais pas  réalisé combien il fallait défaire pour pouvoir refaire...on avait des trous partout pour pouvoir passer les tuyaux, les broches, l'isolation... mais on m'assure qu'après, ça va être facile de boucher les trous.




Stepping out of the new and into the old. Now that the new sun porch is in place it is time to focus on the renovations needed inside the older part of the house. It is time to make ready to bring in everyone from the carpenters to the electricians to the plumbers. This includes some still needed demolition and still more wall paper to remove....yes more wall paper! 

Let the construction begin

Hey, hey...we are back!

It has been just a little over a month since the weekend which the house was lowered onto the new foundation. On the following Wednesday construction began. Our new sun-porch / entry / mudroom was the first thing to go up (in two days) followed the following week by finishing the basement. We have a crew of three guys doing the carpentry; Carol, Gino and Marc-André. They work like a superstorm; three independant twisters massing together to converge as a category five storm....it seems like that there is nothing that they cannot do!
The second week of construction brought in the crew from Levesque and McIntyre Electric to start the arduous task of fishing wire through the maze of walls and floors and the many fire stops hidden in the old walls.
As the addition was placed onto the back of the house, the old cedar shingles were removed from the outside wall to reveal the massive lumber which the house is constructed. One inch thick boards, some fourteen and sixteen inches wide, covered by a second layer of one inch boards...all covered by a layer of birch bark!! The original vapor barrier!
We have been very busy as of late and are sorry for not being as up to date with our photos....but stay tuned, we have more to come. Again, thanks for following!




Oui ! On est de retour....Depuis que la maison est revenue sur la terre ferme, tout va très, très vite !  Les charpentiers ont construit notre ralonge/ nouvelle entrée en deux jours seulement !  On découvre les dessous de la maison : du bois, des grosses planches, de l'écorce de bouleau...vraiment impressionnant !

Step one.....check!

Finally, after many sleepless weeks, the crew showed up on Saturday (two weeks ago) to lower the house down on to the new foundation.
After the foundation was poured it was suggested to allow the concrete to cure for at least a week before setting the house back down. It was an extremely cold and windy day but the crew from Victor Godin House Movers did not let that get in their way from doing their ''thang''. Super professional bunch of guys. After it was down and the beams removed, another seperate crew set in to put in the drainage around the foundation and ready it for the backfilling.
What a crazy few weeks! Later that day, I took Margot and Sarah down to Moncton for a quick two day trip; as Monday was a holiday for us, for some shopping and get-away- time....they deserved it for putting up with my hysteria during this part of our adventure.


Enfin, après quelques (longues) semaines notre maison allait redescendre.  Il faisait tellement froid pendant toute la journée, mais l'équipe de Victor Godin était concentrée à la tâche....une chance !  J'ai seulement pu rester quelques minutes pour voir la maison redescendre.  C'était un peu dur sur les nerfs...penche par en avant...penche par en arrière... !

Finalement, tout s'est très bien passé et oui, on méritait une belle fin de semaine à Moncton ! :)

Vraiment...un ouragan...vraiment !! Really....a hurricane...really!!

C'était déjà assez stressant de voir sa maison se tenir debout sur des petits blocs, trop semblables au jeu Jenga. Il a fallu que quelqu'un creuse tout le tour et surtout en dessous pour préparer le terrain pour la fondation.  Comme une cerise sur le sundae, on ajoute l'ouragan Sandy qui se dirigeait vers chez nous et surtout qui rencontrait une autre tempête...question de redoubler, voir même «retripler» notre niveau de stress. Deux semaines de nuits blanches : les vents vont-ils faire tomber notre maison ? La pluie torrentielle va-t-elle causer des glissements de terrain ? La pluie et les vents...

Finalement, Sandy aura été bien sage pour nous.  La fondation pouvait donc être coulée avec un peu de retard, mais quand même coulée.  C'était assez impressionnant de voir les gros camions se promener sur le terrain (très, très vaseux) tout près de la maison qui semblait si fragile.

Malheureusement, on a dû sacrifier quelques arbres pour les deux gros camions de ciment.  RIP mes deux beaux lilas en arrière de la maison.  Ça m'a fait de la peine, mais entre deux arbres ou pas de fondation, le choix n'était pas trop difficile...je me suis fait dire : «y'en a trois autres des arbres de lilas dans notre cours» !

En quelques jours, l'aspect de notre nouvelle maison a beaucoup changée...




Take one very old and heavy house, lift it five feet in the air, place it on blocks to play ''Jenga'', excavate all the earth around it to essentially make it ten feet in the air, now add one post tropical hurricane Sandy and what do you get.....about two weeks of constant worry and very little sleep!!

After the wow and cool factor of lifting the house, the realization of having our house supported on just a bunch of blocks of wood becomes all consuming; every other thought, morning, noon, and night....especially the night! I kept waiting for that early morning phone call....''Mr. Perry, there seems to have been an incident with your house...''. Now throw in for ''fun'' some post tropical hurricane Sandy winds and drenching rain for about three days! Talk about good timing to jack one's house in the air.

Two days after the initial lifting the footing was poured. We were hoping that the foundation would follow a couple of days later but there was a conflict in timing with our concrete guys. This is when Sandy rolled into town. They were able to put up the forms during the storm but running the concrete was impossible. That Wednesday night (Halloween), right after work, as the storm was fading, I headed down to the house to try and pump some of the three feet of water out of the hole and the forms. Stayed there into the night to try and ready it for cement the next morning. Everything went well except for a major house fire that I was called out to with our fire dept. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to choose your priorities in life; so to all my brothers and sister in the Charlo Volunteer Fire Dept.....I am sorry for not making it to this one.
The foundation was poured first thing the next morning.

The big dig....after the big lift....

Now that the house is in the air, the next step is to dig underneath and around to prepare the area for the forms for the footing and the foundation. The day following the lift the crew showed up with the shovel and the bulldozers to get the job done. Luckily the ground underneath was dry and just that; ground and no rock.
Sorry for the delay with this update but life has been very busy the last two weeks, but do not worry, there will be more to come very soon...thanks for following!



Enfin la maison est dans les airs ! Mais il y a tout un autre travail à faire : creuser sous la maison pour pouvoir installer les formes pour la fondation.  Pas mon genre de travail du tout...oufff !  On était (et les travailleurs aussi ) bien content de savoir qu'il n'y avait pas de grosses roches, mais seulement de la terre.

Les dernières semaines furent très occupées, mais tout devrait entrer dans l'ordre...les autres photos devraient suivre plus rapidement...merci de nous suivre !