Hold back your tears guys… This needed to happen.
I know I know, it looks terrifying. But that’s construction for you!! If you tuned into the last post about all our plans for the Best End House, you’ll know that the biggest aspect of the design is raising the house. And that doesn’t happen by magic! It’s a scary process but one that will ultimately lead to an amazing house where we can actually have space to live and work. And whilst there’s a certain element of not wanting to see how the sausage is made, it would be wrong of me to hide the true, not so Pinterest worthy process from you. So here goes… Demo day!
Demolition Day At Best End House
If the idea of lifting a house is completely foreign to you, you’re not alone! Nearly every one of my friends who doesn’t live in my hometown who I told about this was like um what?! But yes, it’s normal to lift a house in Queensland, and such a great use of space. In fact most people do this as the first port of call when renovating a house.
Raising the House
As I mentioned in the last post, raising the house is a process of using jack-like poles to raise the house, and then placing blocks underneath to stabilise it. Then, as you can see if happening in these pics, a digger comes in and digs out the underneath to make the space for the understorey. Then the house is restumped with new posts to hold the top floor up, and yogood goog to go!
Admittedly it’s pretty scary to see this happening, and makes you think holy crap what have we done?! But all I keep doing is looking back at the plans and focusing on what’s to come, so much amazingness… At least that’s the plan. As predicted the shoddy addition to the back and the old haggard deck pretty much just fell off the house once it was moved over, so without even trying we were able to strip it back to just the original core.
It surely does look scary, but I’m sure the outcome will be wonderful.
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Cant wait to share more!
That is… bizarre, but kind of cool at the same time 🙂
Thanks so much!
I think that seeing these pictures makes this project so much more interesting to me. I mean, when do you come across something like that, seeing how a house is raised and transformed. I still find this very exciting!
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Yay I’m sooooo excited to hear that x
Why didn’t you just buy a new house?
Because we like this one 🙂
We did this to our old house built in 1816 in Maine. We were able to work on the interior while they were pouring a new foundation and walked a gangplank everyday to work inside. Best thing we ever did and I was inside when they finally laid the house back down on the new foundation and guess what? All those old doors that had been having a hard time shutting before we lifted the house, slowly swung shut. Amazing transformation, amazing level house again. Best part was that we added a full basement to a house that had none before and the house has everything level and perhaps another 180 years of life. Would do it again in a heartbeat.
Oh amazing, that’s so cool! We’re actually lifting to add another level below but I think it’s the same process 🙂
SO exciting to see this happen! I can’t even imagine how worried I’d be watching them lift it, but they pay off is going to be awesome. Congrats again!
Eva | http://www.shessobright.com
Hahaha I know, but you gotta trust the experts. 🙂
Cant wait to share more!
Hahaha its all good, just some old sneakers!
OK sure we’ll send it through!
It is an odd and unnerving sight to see it underway. Here in San Francisco, we lift old victorians regularly. It’s an expensive process for foundation retrofitting in trembler land.