Digging Again

It seems that 2026 has become the year of the shovel. At least around here, it has. The latest chapter of farmhouse renovating has turned. So, today's post is about my participation.

 

Back Story

rough as-bought floor plan

For this part of the city / county, our house is old, built in 1948 it is one of the original buildings in this area. It was one of the farmer's original houses for one of the kids, and it is the oldest remaining house from that old farm. The house next door was built a few years later for another of his kids, but all the others, including the original house, are gone. This was a 2 bed / one bath house then. At some point in the 1960's, one of the bedrooms was blown out, making for a larger living space and 2 bedrooms and a connecting hallway were added behind it. It was in this configuration we found the house: 3 bed / one bath. That rear hallway ran from a bookshelf in the eastern wall west to a door into one of the bedrooms. Early in the house improvements, we removed that bookshelf on the east wall and put in a back door. Ang and I sleep in the original bedroom and our respective offices / guest sleeping are in the additions. After living in this formation for a few years, and completing lots of other things, we decided that getting a bathroom added would be a good idea. As the economy continues to erode, this looks more and more like a dicey idea, but we are in it now.

 

Demo

before the demo started

Once we got the doors on the shop, and I moved everything car-related out there, that created space in the garage for.... all the stuff that was in our offices to be stored. Yeah, that's not what I thought was going to happen either. Once we got most of the stuff out of the respective spaces, we covered what remained with sheets. The biggest areas to vacate were the closets which were pretty full. The actual demolition of the north-side walls of those 2 offices came next, and then we learned what old-skool wall work was like. They double-dry walled everything, but with thinner sheets. So, like today, the drywall is maybe almost a half an inch thick. This stuff was more like 3/8" thick, but double sheeted. The inner sheet is more like today's gypsum drywall. The outer sheet is more like a sheet of plaster that then has a light skin of plaster mud on top of that. The second layer is offset so the seams don't appear on top of one another. The result is why the house is so quiet and why a voice does not carry around a corner. This also makes demo more than twice as time consuming. The plaster stuff goes everywhere. There is chicken wire (or similar) in the corners and all of is is super dusty. For the actual demo plan, we eliminated both of our closets and that rear hallway.

 

Foundation Again

post-demo, walls gone

Early on in our adventure with this house, we brought in some foundation experts to stabilize the house. The main beam running under the original house had become compromised, so a new beam was put in. The 1960's addition was "bouncy", so we had them solve that too. As effective as the main solution was, the addition solution was not. That part of the house remained bouncy and having them perform a lifetime guarantee adjustment did not solve the problem either. So, since so much was getting demolished already, we took up the floor and added an access to the joists by removing some subfloor. And then removing some more. We soon realized that the "expert" work was not that great. They had added a beam right next to the original, but there was nothing wrong with the original beam. The added one was significantly smaller, however.

 

We got a few bids to resolve, but ultimately we saved literally thousands of dollars with a contractor simply firming the original beam. With the flooring removed we could also see that a couple of joists were missing and one was under-sized so it didn't even touch the beam. Once those shortcomings were resolved, the floor, even a floor that was simply plywood sitting on top of the joists, was far more stable underfoot. During this time, we all noted just how little crawlspace there was in the crawlspace. There was literally 7 inches between the vapor barrier and the bottom of the joists for most of it, and even less space over where the bathroom was going. There was barely room for a child to maneuver under there much less a grown person, and there was no way plumbing could be run. Enter me and another round of digging.

 

Dig It

A crawlspace is supposed to have at least 18 inches (half a meter) of clearance. Ideally, it is closer to 2 feet (2/3 meter). Rather than dig out over a foot of material for the entire crawlspace, I dug a 3 foot wide by 2 foot deep channel that ran from the access into the main house crawlspace southwest (diagonally) to the midpoint under the original beam, before turning straight west. I felt this would create sufficient space for the waste pipe while also creating enough room for someone to crawl around under there for maintenance.

 

My method was somewhat simple. First, I peeled back the vapor barrier and ultimately reused it. With the dirt exposed through the joists, I dug down with a post-hole digger, filling 5 gallon buckets, 2 at a time. I would then haul those buckets to the wheelbarrow sitting outside the back door (and down 3 steps). I would move 4 buckets of dirt and then take the wheelbarrow either behind the shop where the grey water pipe was done in my last post, or over to the location where we hope to grow food eventually. I lost count of how many barrows I moved, but I was able to fill a wheelbarrow in about 20 minutes and I dug hole for 3 days, at least 6 hours a day. The picture below on the right provides some perspective of how much dirt got moved: more than the height of a 5 gallon bucket.

 

Ang helped when she wasn't working, carrying the buckets and moving the barrow. When that was rolling, we were moving a barrow more often. Ultimately, we moved a great deal of dirt, digging to at least 22 inches of clearance, sometimes more, 1 meter (3 feet) across and perhaps 8 meters (25 feet) long. I took ibuprofen for 3 days, but after that, the pain subsided and I kind of enjoyed feeling my muscles to acutely. I feel reminded of when I used to go to the gym and has me thinking of going back again.

 

Wrap Up

With the access trench dug, our contractor could return and frame some walls. The inner wall of my office has been sheet-rocked so I can return to working in an office again. I had been working with my laptop wherever I could find space for a few weeks. The plumber is due in a few days to do the rough plumbing and the main contractor will return after the plumbing is in. We hope to have a usable bathroom by the end of the year, but we are at least partially managing the calendar by budget.

 

As for cars, I have found that historically October has been really hard on our cars. The first few colder days bring the barely-working things down. Case-in-point, I will be returning to K'Lack's brakes, Cedar is working on his fuel vapor system and Frankie (new Astra) needs it's bank 1 O2 sensor replaced and new wipers. None of these are blog-post worthy, but it is that time of year when things need to be looked at.

 

Thanks, as always, for following along.