House Raising Extravaganza!

Remember our plan to raise the house the remaining 300mm by ourselves?

As I said, we got a whole lot of styes delivered last week.


And then Tom spent a day assembling the 'stacks'.


It was quite an involved process getting each one level so it was actually a stable platform for the house to rest on.




And then we took the day off work on Thursday and enlisted some help from Tom's brother Phil and a lovely homestay student we had got to know when he stayed at our last house. Thankfully we also hired a professional house-raising guy to keep us on the straight and narrow.

We had to raise the meter box (that our electrician had installed to satisfy the power company so we hopefully get power reconnected soon) by the same margin.



Allie of course was very keen to contribute to the effort in any way she could.


Once all was set up correctly, the boys got to work with jacks on top of the stacks (haha that rhymes), raising the house little by little. Here they are, with one boy and one jack perched on each stack.


We didn't remove the back steps, so they were a good testament to how much of a difference 300mm can make. We now get a really good workout just climbing up them at that angle!



And then we struck a problem. Quite a major one, actually.


The horrible existing bathroom started separating from the house, and we were terrified that it would fall away entirely and crash to the ground (with all of our newly purchased doors inside it)


So we had to stop immediately and devote all of our energy towards trying to prop it up.


With a very sophisticated (and sturdy) system...


In the end the boys did manage to get it sturdy enough to be reasonably confident that it wouldn't fall at any moment, but it's made the decision for us that we need to get the new bathroom done ASAP, because the existing one really isn't at all safe to be spending any time in.

We got the house up the 300mm without further incident (thank goodness) leaving us with a lovely big gap between the tops of the steel posts and the house beams above.


Now for another complication. Somewhere along the way the house appears to have slid a little towards the left of the block (looking from the street), which means that none of the holes for bolts in the steel posts (and the little extenders - more to come on those shortly) line up anymore. Kind of a big problem, since it means we can't secure the beams to the posts.


So we're going to need to do a bit more work in order to get the house back into its correct position, probably with professional assistance again. Yay. More expense. We are nevertheless very happy that we managed to get through the Raising Take Two without anything too horrible happening (aside from almost losing our bathroom - which we were going to demolish anyway), so it's one step at a time once again to get things the way they need to be.

Never a dull moment at the pour améliorer household!! And we're certainly not expecting any this coming week. We're hoping to get the tiling for the new bathroom started, the house slid back into its proper position above the posts, the bracing installed between some of the posts to stop the house swaying in the wind (which is very unnerving when you're painting a ceiling while perched on top of scaffolding), a decision from our engineer as to whether or not we can have a lower ground floor (which would solve our height issues), the power reconnected (FINALLY!) , and the kitchen cabinets quasi-installed.

Busy much?