Sand Dirt Box

Now I know that Andy and I have mentioned that we're trying to design a antique kitchen with all the modern amenities, but I think we're going to extremes at this point.

A few pictures of the old kitchen, pre-sledgehammer:





And here is what we're dealing with as of Monday night:




Wow, that's a lot of dirt! The demo of the kitchen has brought good news and bad news. The good news is that the kitchen is demo'ed. The bad news is that (and I'm going to have to itemize this, so I don't forget anything):

• The footing in the back of the old house (back corners of the old kitchen) either rotted away or never existed. New footers must be installed (yay! more poured cement!).
• Neither the rear wall of the old house (between the Slope and the old kitchen) nor the the wall between the dining room and the kichen are properly structured as load-bearing walls. Hmm... so what was holding up the back end of our house, you ask? Sheer will and a prayer, it would seem. Guess we know why the floor on both the first and second levels slopes downward. Nothing catastrophic, but interesting.
• There is old termite damage (and the contractor did emphasize OLD... no sign of anything recent) to the bottom of the studs in the kitchen. It appears that the previous renovation attempted to remediate this issue, but in yet another demonstration of construction mediocrity, likely did as much harm as good. Our contractor will take care of it the right way.
• The floor joists in the kitchen needed to be replaced for several reasons... one of which is that the lack of crawl space underneath the existing joists would not pass inspection. Contractor is digging out the crawl space as you read this (well, not if you're reading before 7am and after 5pm).

Phew. I think I covered the major bases. On the one hand, we knew that it would be a miracle to reach this stage of the process without some big surprises. After all, the house about 5 times as old as we are... jeez, if I'm not falling apart at that point... On the other hand, these obstacles will take time and money to overcome and time and money are our enemies in this whole "adventure."

The positive perspective on this: At least we'll know the back end of our house is supported properly!