Welcome to our article, House renovating, part two
Earth work and steel columns
Dear readers, because the original article was too long, we have made to blogs, and this is part two, so, let us continue. In this case
under this house all the timber stumps had to be removed, and there was an old
concrete floor that had to be completely removed and taken away, then the
foundations for the steel stumps were dug, after that the steel stumps were
fixed to the timber bears and the concrete poured after making sure that the
building was level. While the concrete is setting and becoming stronger as the
time goes by, a steel worker is making and fixing these steel braces in a few
places, as it is shown on the plan, these braces attach two columns one to the
other, one end of the brace is attached near the bottom of one column and the
other end at the top of the other column, a second brace is placed in the
opposite way, so that the braces form like an X, this bracing makes the two
columns very strong, because it transfer the strength of the concrete
foundation of this column to the top of next column, in a lineal way.
After a day or two when the concrete
foundations become strong enough to take the weight of the house and the stress
of any movement of the house above; the house remover will come back to remove
their jacks, their steel beams and their piles of timber, then the house will
be fully on the new steel columns.
Once the house remover team has taken
away their heavy equipment, the builder will come in and start by digging the
rest of the foundations and concreting them as required; and then, they work
out of to lay a concrete floor slab under the house.
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Concrete
slab and things to do next
Anyhow, the house raisers have come and
gone, now a builder and concreter that lay the concrete floor come, they level
the ground under the house, work out the level that the floor is going to be,
and start boxing accordingly. After boxing around the house, they lay the steel
reinforcement, as shown in one of our photos, they get it inspected. When they
are ready, they lay the concrete floor.
Now that the concrete floor has been
laid, and the house is setting permanently in the right position, the builder
can start to reconnect all those things that have been disconnected to raise
the house, so, the plumber, the gas fitter and drainer will come to reconnect
these things, there are plumbers that can do those three things, so, you don’t
need to call three individuals to do these jobs. It is very likely that the
power needs to be reconnected from an electrician, and many other electrical works,
not only for the old house, but also for the future rooms under the house, perhaps
a new power box is required, anyhow, the electrician will know what to do. But
that is not all.
Because the house has been raised, now
the existing stairs don’t reach the ground anymore, so, the builder needs to
extend or replace the stairs. After that the house upstairs can be occupied
again, if there are no other major works to be done.
Anyhow, after doing a few other things,
the owners move back to live in the house, because they want to save money, as
they are on a budget, they realize that they don’t have the money to finish
everything, So, they decide to enclose under the house and finish the external
walls only. The rest of the walls will be left bare for when they can save some
money to do it. Here we can say that for the time being, all renovation works
on the house have been done. To save money the owners are going to paint the
house themselves, which is a job that most of us can do. But after all this
works on the house, the garden is a mess and the owner will do that themselves,
since they know how to do that.
Gardening
and other things involved
Now, the yard needs to be made nice
again, starting from removing those pieces of building material that are left
over. The ground needs to be levelled, because there are hips of dirt and the
ground is uneven, what we are talking here is not that we want the ground level,
like we do when we build something, but we want the ground to follow the
natural gradient of the land. After the yard is cleaned and levelled, we need
to landscape the yard, or at least plant some trees or shrubs and then lay some
lawn.
There are many other things that the
owners need to do as well, to make the house and yard look beautiful. You see, the
owners want their house to look beautiful and inviting, to do that it costs
money, so, most times the owners do it themselves.
But it is worth to make the effort.
After all, when we visit somebody house, the front yard and the garden is the
first thing that catches the eye, from this view in mind, we start to imagine
what we can find inside and what sort of people are living there.
Having said that, now we can go back to
talk about our house and its garden. The owner of this house that we are
talking about have done a lot of work and have fixed the yard and the garden,
as you can see from some of these photos beside this article. I believe that
they have done a good job.
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Fencing
and other things
After doing all this work on the house, now the house looks great, but there are fences that are so ugly that need replacing. So, these owners have replaced also some fences. They have also built a brand-new fence in the front, as you can see from to photo, in the original article, that you can see if you follow this link, House renovating, Today they still should finish the rooms under the house, and they will do that when they can save the money, but most of the work has been done and they are happy about it.
I think I have said enough in this article, so, see you in our next article, where we are going to talk about, Fixing the landing, Or something else. See you soon.
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