The old living room addition on the front of the house was on the left. [Original house pic, below] We built around that addition, put a room in the empty ell on the right and built the second floor over it.
The new front of the house incorporated the old front of the house - the wall with the old chimney on it. The foundation under that front was the only good foundation in the original house. We kept it.
After Eric put in the new beams, he could tear out the old wall with the window and chimney. He did. It was a mess. [Top pic]
The chimney went first. It took 2 days of sorting and chipping off the old mortar to clean it up. We saved all the unbroken bricks and chimney liner blocks we could. Here's the stack.
We'll use them for paths or path edges later.
We spent a day taking apart as much of the old front wall as we could salvage. I kept the window sashes for cold frame covers. We took the nails out of the good studs. [pic, right] Yes, it was a pain in the rear. A huge pain in the rear. I assume we will be thankful some day. That day is not today.
[Today is more a day of swearing than gratitude.]
Here's what's left of the old front room. If you blow up the pic and look to the back of the room, you can see where the old roofline was where the front room addition attached to the old house.
Next tasks:
- Tear out old floor and joists.
- Dig out new crawlspace.
- Gravel new crawlspace.
- Pour concrete to join new foundation with old foundation.
- Build new front wall.
- New inside floor joists and subfloor.
So that'll take a few weeks.
