This was a difficult day. Actually the whole process is getting to me, but today was tough. Steve, The House Mover/Lifter, showed up this morning to get ready to lower the house again. There are a few problems. The chimney won't fit down onto the pad that was made for it because there are huge chunks of concrete still attached to the bottom of it (or there were.) I was out front watching them work this afternoon and I was so nervous I almost couldn't watch. First Dave, one of Steve's workers, was laying down on a board that was angled up to an iron beam with nothing to hold it in place. I could just see the thing slipping down and Dave lying in a heap at the bottom of the moat which currently surrounds the house. Turns out that was the least of his worries. They were moving one of the iron girders so that they could chip away at the bottom of the chimney. And they're so casual about it all. Yeah, we're just going to lift the chimney up with these oversized car jacks and then slide the iron beam over a couple of feet. No big deal. First they had to move the temporary stairs that go up to the house. In the process they moved the roof of the porch over a few inches. That's not a big problem.
The porch will be replaced in a few weeks anyway. It's just that climbing up and down those stairs seems a bit risky now.Once they'd jacked up the chimney, and removed one of the iron beams, they started to attack the big lump of concrete at the bottom. It was a job fraught with peril. Dave was standing on a board which was extremely slippery because of the mud on the bottom of his boots. He's using a huge concrete drill and trying to keep his footing, on a piece of wood that could slip out from under him at any time. My stomach was just churning watching the whole thing. It wasn't the first time I was thankful that my wife had put her foot down and declared that my brother and I were NOT going to fix the foundation ourselves. Thank you Robin. Thank you God. Turns out I didn't see the real danger. The drill caught in one of the holes and the body of the drill caught Dave right in the mouth. Knocked out two of his teeth, and cut open his lower lip. He looked like he'd come out on the wrong side of a bar brawl. As he was tending to his mouth, Steve took a wedge, smacked it into the hole they'd made and started to separate the huge chunk of concrete from the bottom of the chimney. In my mind I was watching the concrete come down, hit the top of the ramp he was standing on, and sending him into orbit. Sometimes a creative mind is not a good thing. I finally went into the house and tried to get some work done. The house was bucking and swaying like it was a boat on rough seas. I am ready for the house to be back on solid ground, back down on a brand new foundation, and not swaying back and forth like we live in a tree house. Just call us Swiss Family Robinson. I can't wait to sing "How Firm a Foundation" tomorrow evening. Get me down Scotty, or Steve, or whoever.