This is house number 6 and my wife says it's the last one so it better be good this time. Picked up this old place for 18k on 4.5 acres 60/40, cleared/timber. The place has been vacant for 35.5 years and it shows. It needs everything it could possibly need from foundation, structure, windows, etc,,,,,,,,,. I started working on the house full time a week ago Monday. I started by stripping everything out of the basement. The basement had a coal stoker, 2 steam boilers, 2 tons of heavy steel pipe, 250 gallon fuel oil tank. a ton of coal, 3 pickup trucks of everything and anything. Basement is now virtually empty. Scrap yard gave me almost $500 for the steel. There were 6 posts that support 2 beams which carry floor joist loads and above bearing loads. 2 of the 6 were rotted up 6 inches and hanging from the beam supporting nothing. Sagging of the structure was significant and was 1 5/8 low in the center. I fired up the laser and brought the old place up to with 1/4" all in a day. Some plaster popping and creaking but all in all a easy raise. The place is heavy with 3 finished floors. (2) 20 ton jacks were needed. Yesterday I had the excavator over there doing grade work. Water has been infiltrating 2 stone wall for over 35 years and now we have the correct pitch of grading away from the structure.
The front porch is a disaster and the left side footing is 2 1/8" low so a bit of work is in order. Water has been a real destructive element on this old house. It is not beyond hope but I have my hands full with this one. one thing that has saved the wood structure is the original cedar shake roof. Believe it or not there are no major roof leaks over the interior of the structure. As I get to the inside of this place in about a month I'll get some pics but for now the push is for the exterior. Tomorrow I start to restructure the front porch starting at the footing.
pick one here is the same location as pic 2 in my first post and shows the proper grade, minus a little hand work. In the first it's kinda hard to see but water run towards the house and that is bad. We took out over 2.5 feet of earth on that left side up the hill and cleared a few cord of oak and maple
thanks for the update lenny I"ve been wondering how things where going with this project when you first posted about it earlier in the year. Seems like you have your hands full.
Lenny, the structure is beautiful, but it looks like you have a lot of work. How the heck do you have time for Rally Racing?
I'm always amazed when I see grading sloped toward a structure. It is a pretty basic concept to run water away from a foundation.
It looks like the house had very little time left without your intervention. Nice to see you tackling this project. Too many people use a very destructive tool called a match.
Great pics Lenny, it will be fun to see the progress! Bet you can't wait to get it done and move in! Lots of space for all of you. I bet all the kids will have their own bedroom in this house. We'll be up to see it soon!
I agree with everyone...great project and can't wait to see how things progress. Like you, I can see the potential in older homes with just a little TLC!
Phoenix, AZ (Displaced Yooper with family connections in Houghton, Ontonagon & Marquette counties.)
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Where else but the UP can you find a house that has been vacant for 35.5 years without some bureaucrat/zoning official demanding that it be demolished and removed? There's a lot of that UP there!
And how about all the old abandoned mining properties? They just walked away and left 'em — not just the buildings but vast amounts of equipment as well! What, was there no salvage value in all that old steel back then?
There's a lot of old autos just abandoned in "da bush" too, and one I recall was left in a garage for decades, until the garage collapsed around it. and another with its hood and engine missing, only to be replaced by a little sapling, which has since grown into what is now a huge tree! Try that anywhere else!
I'll be working on it till it's done and I have a 50/50 chance of being in it by November. Today I Jacked up the left side of the front porch. The bottom plate rotted off the footing. I slipped in a new pressure treated 2x8 and she is level again. There was lots of rotted wood and I will not finish replacing structure till the end of the weekend. Everything is so time consuming on a project like this. In the back of the house, water has been running into the basement and has significant damage. I had the excavator dig down to the footing and expose the entire wall. We're gonna plaster the wall and seal it. Also have a drain tile ready to go in bu the end of tomorrow. Back to the front porch, I had to replace the floor joists, ceiling joists and roof rafters. It's still better than demoing the entire porch and starting over. I am maintain the look and salvaging every last board foot of lumber if it's not rotten. I'll get a few pics tomorrow of the progress.
Whats the inside look like? I bet it was pretty cool walking in there after being vacant for 35 years..
The inside is the best part of the house but to most it would be considered rough
Today we finished digging a trench with the backhoe and hit rock, I mean big time rock. Took us 5 hrs of 90 lb jack hammering to get through, wow am I tired. My buddy Eric is hammering in the first pic, that's also his Evo ralley car in one of the pics
things are going slow on da old home. The trench is filled in around back, new service is run to the house and the power company is coming soon to energize it. The basement structure is sound but now I have been working on the roof structure. I found a few fractured roof rafters so I built a small wall under them and jacked the roof back up to the correct position. The rear entry way of the house was an addition way long ago and was built by someone who it mentally challenged in building construction. The ridge rafter was out of level 7" over a 9' length,,,,yup,,,,that's what I said,,,7" of 9' and there's no fixing it from the inside without taking it apart. I reinforced the hip rafters and built it up on the outside tying it all together with 3" deck screws. It's still not perfect but for a 100 yr old house it's certainly respectable. All the decorative tail rafters on the back of the house were rotten and were cut with the wrong roof pitch. So I made new ones and cut the right pitch to match the rafter pitch, it looks right now.
This roof is 30 squares and has the original 100 yr old cedar shake roof with asphalt shingles over it. There is a ton of work removing them and even more work picking it all up off the ground. I am re-sheeting the entire roof with 7/16 osb over the existing 1x10 roof sheeting.
I've worked on average 12 hrs a day for 2 weeks since I posted last and seem to have accomplished not much.
Having been involved in a number of remodeling projects, I'm exhausted just looking at the photos. Contrary to what you feel is "not accomplishing much", I'm impressed by what you've done so far.
My daughter lived in Calumet/Larium for a number of years before she moved to Marquette and I was always fascinated by the classic "project houses" in the area, some of which were undergoing some great restorations.
Good luck on your project. It's a house with character that is hard to find in modern construction.
remodeling again
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Originally Posted by peter
