We purchased our home a little over five years ago. It was so cute, and we just fell in love with it! It was perfect for us and our two young boys. It is an old, 900sq ft., farm style house, that has had a lot of face lifts and updates. We were really content with everything about it.
A few months after we moved in, our lives changed forever, when we felt that we were being led to expand our family. A year later, we adopted three amazing kids. One boy, and two darling girls. At first we never even thought that the size of our house was an issue. The children never complained, and although things were cramped at times, such as birthday parties and holidays, we viewed our home as being full of love. As time went on, and the honeymoon period for the adoption wore off, we started to have some behavioral issues with the children, and when one child was having a melt down, the other children didn't have a place to "get away" from it. Our three sons share a bedroom upstairs, and the two girls share the other upstairs bedroom, so if someone is screaming and carrying on, EVERYONE hears it!
Ah, but alas, we still felt that having a small home was a benefit, especially in our situation. It was easier to monitor where the children were, and what they were doing. They all learned to share space (somewhat). And it allowed us to become a close family, both in space relations, and emotionally! :)
When our home started to show more of its age, and distress, we visited the notion of lifting the house and putting in a basement. But like I had said before, that seemed like such a far fetched dream. Our home's foundation began to crumble, and got worse and worse..as did our children's attitudes and emotional status'. As we spent most of our time "putting out fires" with our children, and dealing with their RAD issues, we gave very little attention to the condition of our home. We did deal with flooding in our Michigan-style basement every spring, or winter thaw, and we noticed it getting worse as time went by.
Our children's needs started to become more and more clear, as they cried out for more privacy and personal space. When things seemed to be at their worst, we knew we needed to do something. So we got on our knees and prayed. We prayed specifically about our home and the needs of our children. We asked if it was possible for us to lift our home, put in a basement and add on. We got our answer, and things quickly began to fall into place.
Some of the first things we needed to do was to get permits and make our building plans. We planned on doing most of the work ourselves, but the house lifting, digging the basement and pouring the walls were definitely jobs we didn't feel qualified to even attempt. The process of praying and interviewing contractors began. We found the two companies that we wanted to use, and we got penciled in their books!
It wasn't long and it was almost time...we needed to get some things done first! We needed to move and transplant any plants, trees, or shrubs around the house that we intended on saving. We also needed to remove a large portion of the front deck. Along with the work outside, we also needed to do work on the inside. We needed to remove anything that was in the basement such as furnaces, freezers, and the bladder to the well and sump pump, and including anything that hung down below the floor joists, like duct work, or plumbing. The jobs seemed to go well, after all, taking things apart always goes faster than putting them back together!
Much of the things we removed we intended on reusing, so we were careful on how we handled things and put them carefully in the barn. The front deck came apart piece by piece, so we could salvage as much of it as possible.
In the picture above, you can see the guys working hard at disassembling the deck, and they were also helping dig up the Hostas that surrounded the deck, and the girls and I would come and get them and transplant them to other places in the yard.
It didn't take long, and we needed to move out of the house, and into the campers! The only thing we were waiting on was the delivery of the porta-john. Once that was delivered, the last few pipes were disconnected, and the well was unhooked.
This is the poster I placed on the bathroom door the day the pipes were disconnected. It was a day of mixed emotions!
When the house mover/lifters started working, things really started to change quickly! On the first day, they dug around the perimeter of the house exposing the foundation so they could punch holes that they would use to slide their beams into.
It didn't take them long to find some issues with this 100+ yr old house. Over the years, the back part of the house got dirt packed under it, right up tight to the floor joists. That's not a good thing!
The next day, the workers were back, and started to put in the big metal beams that would eventually support our home.
They dug, and dug...until they could slide the beams into place, and we watched and watched as our yard disappeared and giant dirt piles began to form.
With the beams in place, it was time to call it a day. We were very excited to have a day filled with progress. The air was filled with the anticipation of what the next day would hold.........
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