It's dug!

So I finished the digging late Monday night.  It's amazing to see all of this old brick that has been covered in dirt for 80 some years.  When I started I thought I might occasionally get the heeby jeebies down there, you know digging around under a house usually late at night.  But I've been having  a great time, the neighbors I'm sure think I'm nuts or are theorizing about the strange things I might be doing (I can't get the movie "the burbs" out of my head) wheeling barrels full of dirt and dumping it in piles in the yard at 9 and 10 at night.  But me, I'm having a great time, in fact as much as I am happy to be done with the digging stage, I'm going to miss it.  Hard labor is missing from most of our lives these days and I for one have enjoyed getting my hands dirty. (At right: look out below!  Standing at the back of the future workshop on the old brick wall-- it used to be an easy 6 inch step down from here, now it's a 3' jump!)

So all in all I'm estimating that there is now 360 cubic feet of dirt in the middle of our yard and missing from under our house.  We are thinking about doing some kind of cool landscape thing with it in the backyard (a hill perhaps :)), which I'm glad andee has agreed to because I REALLY don't want to move it again! 

We now have an extra 2-3.5 feet of headroom (it used to slope from back to front) in the future workroom, so what's next?  Well Robb came over last week when I was about 70% done digging and showed me how to install temporary supports for the floor above.  These are necessary for us to be able to dig under existing supports/piers and pour footer extensions below them.  You are essentially supporting the house next to the old support while you dig under it and re-support it at an appropriate level for the new depth of the dirt floor.  You have to do this because in digging down 2-3 feet we have compromised the original foundation footings.   Don't worry, I'm re-supporting first and compromising second (you do this by leaving dirt, ideally at a 45 degree angle, around the base of the old pier until you get the temp up). 

Constructing the supports:  It's really not too bad of  a job once you know how to do it, but because it is so critical to get it right (the house could literally cave in if you didn't do it right) I am extremely glad Robb was there to help.  He showed me how to do the first one and I followed with the next three.  The deal is that you need to find a joist above that currently rests on the existing pier and get as close to it as possible with the support.  Our job was pretty easy because when Helena's crew worked on the house they installed a rectangle made of heavy duty glue laminate wood to support the kitchen above, they tied it into existing joists and rested it on two new supports and original piers at the front.  So we just needed to get the temp supports onto the glue lam near the old pier.  Robb instructed me to get 4"x6" posts for the temp supports and 4" thick conceret block to rest it on (see above).  We then constructed a base using four concrete blocks that we laid first parallel to the foundation wall and then perpendicular to it (2 on top of 2).  We used the circular saw to cut the support at the measured length (you have to make at least two cuts, one on each side, to get through the 4" piece).  Then he held the support while I toe nailed it to the glue lam above.  We then hammered wedges under the support between it and the concrete block to lock it in place, using a level to make sure we had it straight up and down.  A few days later I put up the next support to the right of that one, which wasn't too bad by myself because I had cut it so that it was a pretty tight fit and was stable enough for me to nail it in at the top.  Once I had dug out the rest of the area though I was faced with a pretty difficult task. 

(pink loops to assist in hanging the 4x6)

Because the glue lam pieces that run parallel to the foundation walls are close to the two front piers I couldn't attach the suppports directly to them, so I had to run another 4x6 across those two glue lam pieces and attach the supports to it.  I struggled for a while to find a way to lift and hold a 6' piece of 4x6 up there (8.5' off the ground) long enough to nail it in on both sides.  After quickly deciding it wouldnt work without help I devised a way of creating loops with string to hold the 4x6 close enough to the glue lam for me to then toe nail it to hold it in place (see pink loops in picture above).  This worked well and gave me the help I needed to get the piece up and attached (right).

All four temporary supports are now in place and it is time to excavate under the old piers.  We will dig down 14" below the bottom of the dirt floor and create a 14" cube that will be the new footer below existing footers, supports or piers.  We will use 2' rebar pieces for structural support.  This is the part of the job that scares me the most.  I'm not an engineer nor a builder so I will be relying heavily on Robb through this phase.  I can't wait though to learn more and to get one step closer to getting the floor in!

I should have included this in the last post.  Below is the approximate plan for the space with dimensiomns missing from the right side because of some changes I have made and haven't remeasured since.