Monday, October 19, 2009

Oh - That's Not Good....



We've been busy. The masons are getting ready to repoint the front of the house, which meant the old rotten porch needed to go. Watching this was nervewracking in the extreme. I was so worried that that triangular roof would pull stones right out of the house when it came down.

It didn't. (Whew!) But it did uncover an existing problem that clearly needs attention. Take a look at the lintel above the front door.




Just inside the front door there is a crack in the ceiling running from the top of the door straight back into the house. A few cracks in old plaster never really concerned us, but now that we can see what's causing this one it's suddenly become much more worrisome.


The mason is looking at several options for fixing this. Option One involves lots of rebar. Option Two involves a completely new lintel. They've already replaced another (much smaller) lintel on the back of the house and did a great job. I just hope I'm not at the house when this repair is made. Seeing a gaping hole above the front door would probably be enough to make me faint. I'm a little dizzy just thinking about it.

And speaking of the masons, they've been at work. Lots of grinding out joints going on. Tomorrow they will have three men on the job - two mortaring and one continuing to grind.





The weather today was lovely. The whole week looks beautiful. It was hard to be in the office all day, but as soon as I got off work I headed to the house. I met my mom and we began priming the kitchen addition. (This after lots of scraping and scrubbing over the weekend.) Here's mom at work with some four-legged supervisors.





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