To prepare the foundation wall for the house, the carpenter covered it with a two-layer wooden sill. He anchored it well
enough to ensure that, should a tornado ever take the house to Oz, the basement will come along with it.
Then, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day ...
Using four hydraulic jacks centrally controlled (left), the movers lowered the house a few inches at a time by raising the metal I-beams slightly (above), sliding out the beams one row at a time (below), then releasing the air in the jacks (left) to lower the building to the next row of beams. |
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Watching from the street and from underneath, I could see, inch by inch, the house lowering first left, then right, then a little forward... Then the walls touched the rim of the foundation. Even more slowly now, the movers eased the 113-year-old onto its first flat foundation in decades. I'd had no idea how painful listening to all those creaks and snaps would be! What was happening to the structure??
Yet, miraculously, stepping inside afterward we saw how the crooked door frames had squared out. Some of the cracks in the plaster walls actually sealed themselves closed again!
The following Saturday, Grandma came to visit and showed off for Brian, cousin Colleen and the camera
that she was on the porch without steps leading up to it!