This is the last post so you can breath a sigh of relief!
The house is starting to resemble Frankenstein's monster! These openings were mortared in with a special mortar - the plan is they leave it like this for 18 months - 2 years to see if there is any more movement/cracking. If there isn't, then the walls can be repaired and the facade painting can begin, and the bedroom cracks repaired and repainted. No idea what happens if any more cracks appear!
The path was repaired - though I am a bit peeved that that middle section is sticking out - the stones should have been laid with long straight ends on the path edge. Oh well.
We had planned to sow grass seed this autumn, but after heavy rain at the end of August some grass and loads of weeds grew back and filled in the gaps! At least weeds are green.
K has since added more gravel up to the level of the path and I can put plants in pots there next summer to make it look a bit more interesting.
What work? You would never know anything had happened here, apart from the Frankenstein's monster look all over the facade (as some wisecrack on facebook likened the 'scars' to!).
Back to normal. Ish.
The old step had to be moved to lay the concrete and the guys made us some new steps - much better as the previous one was just one tall step which was hard work on my knees, and now I have two steps! K has since painted them.
I really thought that the cats might have been peturbed by all the noise and disturbance going on but they seem to have just totally ignored it all - this is how they spent most of the hot summer, shagged out on the tiles!
I brought my potting tidy upstairs so I could do some repotting this summer, and Harry thought it made a nice cat basket!
What a daft boy!
That thankfully is the end of that, until the parts of the walls that were opened up get repaired and the facade painted in about 18 months time. I just hope nothing more cracks and that the foundation work was successful! I've noticed that the cracks in our bedroom didn't open wider this summer like they normally do, so that is a good sign!
It was time to start digging around three sides of the house to install a concrete 'pavement' - laid in order for rain to run away from the house and so the foundations would stay dryer. This will help the soil around the foundations from going through the usual cycles of wet in winter and bone dry in summer.
Our gravel had been originally laid over a liner, but a fair amount of 'soil' had built up over the years. Luckily everything was dry so there was no mud involved, just dust!
Preparing for the concrete to be poured - I found it fascinating all the layers here, geotextile then gravel, then clear plastic, then reinforcing steel. Only a ditch on the outside would have concrete to the full depth to reinforce the concrete path.
More fun and games was all this cutting into the walls where any cracks had been (though we don't recall seeing cracks in half of these places! Guess the experts see things that we ordinary folk don't).
Out the front. The path got a bit destroyed in a few places from the digger but the workmen said they would repair it.
On the right is a great big skip for all the dug out soil - it's the kind that is winched up onto a truck bed. I think we had three skips here in all. By the way Mary Moho went to spent several weeks on the forecourt of the repair garage in the village (where she is known) and we paid them a small amount for being so kind.
Round the back of the house ready for the concrete.
When the garage side was started an old septic tank was found!
All they could do was fill it in and take out any unnecessary pipework - luckily way too much gravel had been delivered for the pavement preparations so they filled it in with that.
Some of my crazy paving path looking a bit worse for wear!
The concrete arrives! We had to go out for a few hours which was annoying.
Round the back of the house.
When we came home the back and front had been finished but they were ready to lay the concrete on the garage side, so I got to watch that.
Dust! This is from cutting out the cracks in the facade with (I think) an angle grinder - it made a tremendous amount of dust. They cleaned it up afterwards. (I'm annoyed that both lavenders from the original front bed that were dug up and repotted died on me - that's one bottom left).
Scaffolding goes up to deal with the higher up cracks, over nice dry concrete. The guys shovelled gravel back in place in the front and the back, leaving only the garage side for us to do (very nice of them as that was not part of their job).
To be continued....
Our house is built on clay, and after a very dry summer in 2022 a large crack appeared on the garage facade. There are other cracks on the facade that have been repaired by previous owners and a few smaller fresh ones appeared too. Also, our bedroom on that side of the house has cracks which widened every summer and closed up in winter when the ground was wet. Long story short our insurance covered the repairs which are due to clay soil drying out during the drought, causing the foundations to move. It's not unusual and is only likely to get worse with climate change to houses built on clay soil.
1. The foundations are injected with resin.
The first lot of work involved drilling into the foundations through the inside of the basement, next to the retaining walls. Then resin is injected in to strengthen the foundations.
Before this happened, we had to empty the garage, workroom and downstairs bedroom, at our expense. So a local removal company came and packed up and took everything away to store for us.
Above and below - the holes being drilled were up to about 5 foot long, the length of the copper rods. You can see the size of the drill bits below!
The covered over area outside the bedroom and workroom. The hose is for the resin injecting. The guys had their own generator as the resin is injected under high pressure into the copper rods, each of which is cut to a different depth, so that there are different depths of resin. You can see the metal rods sticking out of the holes and excess resin around them which was trimmed off afterwards, plus the rods are removed at ground level.
There then followed a gap in time as there was a mix up over the date for the tilers to commence - all the fault of one lot not talking to the next lot in the order of works to be done (all three businesses involved in the different stages were all under the same parent company). The first lot of guys left everything really clean, including the already filthy garage tiles - which were about to be removed, so they really didn't need to wash them - but I was really impressed!
2. The tilers commence
All these rooms had to be retiled as the drilling had to happen indoors, through the existing flooring. When I was first told what would happen I freaked thinking about what state my guest room floor would be in afterwards!! Then I breathed a big sigh of relief when they said they would retile the floors!
Tiles removed from the spare bedroom above (only to find some old tiles beneath) and garage below.
Self-levelling cement was laid in all rooms before tiling could start.
Looking through to our workroom from the garage.
Our tiles arrive! And that is a serious bit of kit, having a crane on the back of the truck. So handy.
Eeks!
It's an ever expanding crane! The good thing is that we got several brand new pallets to keep, whose wood will come in handy. (I'm planning a few little veggie beds for next year.... watch this space 😀).
Garage tiles are a mottled brown/grey colour - far more sensible for a garage floor which will get dirty with a car coming inside.
Outside the spare bedroom - the tiles are a beigey/grey mottled colour.
The guys did such a good job, love how they have done this step here.
We paid extra to have the tiles laid on the diagonal in the bedroom, as the old tiles were staying in the bathroom and were a slightly different size. This way where they meet it looks neat.
Not the bathroom! The entrance to the bedroom from the basement hallway.
I asked for tiled skirting too, as it's much nicer than the boring cheap white wooden skirting that was already there. (I'm going to repaint after Christmas - I hadn't realised how grubby the walls were without furniture in the room, and I did wash off any dirt from the foundation works).
3. Outdoor work commences
Onto stage three. First of all the rootballs of all those shrubs had to come out.
The big one was the bay tree. (It's sitting in front of a Tamarisk tree).
The grass got a bit scuffed up (it got worse!).
To be continued... 😀
