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On May 19, 2:30 pm, "aemeijers" <aemeij...@att.net> wrote:
> "Rich Greenberg" <ric...@panix.com> wrote in message
>
> news:f2nop2$npo$1@reader2.panix.com...
>
> > In article <1179606638.581958.14...@q75g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
> > stasya <mat...@shaw.ca> wrote:
> >>Ok so I bought this old house and have entirely renovated the
> >>interior.
>
> Chuckle. Saw this several times when I was house shopping a couple years
> ago. Interior upstairs was remodeled, acres of fresh drywall/carpet/tile/oak
> trim, but I go in the basement, and the foundation and/or floor structure
> hasn't been touched, and wouldn't pass muster for a chicken coop. One
> memorable place had 2x6 joists, and a literal forest of lally columns in
> basement, holding up short pieces of timber to keep floor from flexing. I
> passed. Note to new homeowners planning renovations- 1. foundation, 2. roof,
> 3. mechanicals. Then and only then, make the inside pretty, or you just
> pissing your money away. Either the house will be worthless, or you will
> have to rip out part of your work to go back and do what you should have
> started with.
>
> >>Before my original contractor left halfway through his
> >>contract in a snit, he'd jacked up various parts of the basement and
> >>braced it so that the walls and floors are now more or less level.
> >>This didn't affect any part of the foundation except under the front
> >>porch where the foundation doesn't actually meet the wall in one
> >>corner. He put in wedges to keep it all level. How exactly would I go
> >>about sealing the crack between the wall and the foundation?
>
> > Find another contractor and do not piss this one off.
I 'pissed' this one off by refusing to sign another contract to add on
bits of stuff like a front porch, laminate flooring, bathroom tile,
etc etc, until he actually finished things in his original contract
like insulation and drywalling.
> You do not 'fill the crack'. You fix the foundation as needed to hold up
> whatever is above it. Are you <sure> it is through sagging? If house had to
> be jacked at multiple points to level it up (versus, say, a low corner or
> wall section that got undercut by water), that tells me entire foundation
> needs a looksee by a real engineer. In some cases, such as improper or
> missing footers, the cure is to jack the house back up, support it on beams,
> tear out old foundation system, and start over. See my comments above about
> not spending a dime on a house unless and until it has a good foundation
> under it. Is porch foundation actually part of house foundation, or grafted
> on? If he had to jack center part of house, need to make sure something is
> under the columns that hold the centerline beam.
>
> aem sends....
I learned a lot about house renovation. Most of it expensive. The
porch foundation is actually an add-on, many years later. The original
floor plan had that portion of front foyer as a bit of open to the
outdoors porch, and at some point, they closed it in as it is now, a
foyer. I got carried away. This house was built in 1912, and is in the
town's history books. I should have left it there!
Stasya
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Re: Old house foundation repair
