My LAST Foundation Post for a While

So I feel like I have 0 time to post anymore. And we haven't had much going on with the house for the past week or so. I felt like I should share the latest on our foundation problems, even though it has to be the most boring thing ever. So this is going to be my last post about the foundation for a while. There might be one or two every now and then if we have any new developments, but since the weather is getting colder and we probably won't be able to do much until spring, I doubt there will be much in the way of big foundation news going on. Plus, I am ready to start Holiday decorating and crafts. I am already itching to put up our Christmas tree, but I've decided to wait until after Thanksgiving again. *cough* the day after *cough*. Doesn't mean I can't start crafting, though right?

Let's get to the latest on the foundation, though. Below are some photos Trent took when he got into the crawl space to check everything out. These are basically a few mistakes that he found, which he sent to the company who worked on it.

These first few photos are blocks that were left unmortared:

One example of why we feel like they were rushing the whole job.

Here's the corner of our front porch where it meets with the side of the house. They left it like this. The corner broke off of the porch and they lined the wall up with it instead of bringing the wall out to where  the side of the house actually was. So we're left with a big gap in the middle, which they just filled with dirt.

And for the final photo, this was the board that Trent was trying to tell them was rotted, and the screws that they put in were not even connecting the boards together. You can see a huge gap in this picture, too.


It's safe to say that the foundation people probably aren't coming back to fix any of their mistakes, so we're going to have to fix everything in the spring, I'm sure. Next year will most likely be full of fixing foundation and structural issues, ripping out the kitchen, and redoing it. I hope we get our kitchen renovation done next year :) That would be nice. But for now, I'm just going to try not to think about the foundation issues and start concentrating on the Holidays and happier thoughts. In other words....My next several posts will hopefully be unrelated to the foundation. :)

Foundation Work: The Aftermath

The foundation work is pretty much done - we paid them earlier this week. The guy who was in charge of our job came over and we brought up a lot of concerns we had after the wall was finished and they raised it as much as they could. Trent went into the crawl space and looked at it, and he saw a lot of details that they had not paid much attention to, like a board that was rotting that they left connected, the corners not being tied into the other walls, and the floor jacks not being moved to the crucial areas that needed support.  Trent did take some pictures of a few areas he was concerned about and sent them to the guy in charge of the project. He said he was sending them to his supervisor. There's a small possibility they could have someone come out to correct the issues, but we'll see. Trent thinks he can correct them himself if they don't come out, so we're not too concerned.

After they had raised the kitchen on the east side of the house (the side where they rebuilt the wall) the room clearly had moved - they were able to raise it a couple of inches; however, there was almost no support in some crucial areas of the floor, and we later found that the foundation wall in the front was pretty much gone. As in, there is almost nothing there to support the front wall of the kitchen. This caused the kitchen to bow in the center. 

We were left with one wall finished, but no wall in the front of the house, our kitchen still not level, and some major movement going on in the kitchen. You can see where the wall kind of split in the center - here's our beadboard work now split apart -

We were expecting that kind of stuff and didn't see it as too big of a deal since we'll be gutting the kitchen and renovating it (hopefully next year), but some things were pretty major, like our door not being in line anymore. It wouldn't even shut, and there was a huge gap on the side. The night they finished, I picked up some cans of spray foam insulation, and Trent temporarily fixed the door alignment so we would have a functioning door, and sprayed some insulation to help fill the gap and keep the cold air out.

If you look at the trim that meets the ceiling in the photo below, you can see where the room bowed toward the center. This has always been a little unlevel, but I think it has gotten worse with the raising of the side wall. It definitely could have used more support when they were raising it. So this is something that Trent will have to try and fix. We're hoping to get more jacks, redo the floor joists, and eventually put in a new sub-floor, and build a new wall in the front. It will be a lot of work, but hopefully it will all be level and we'll have a blank slate for a kitchen renovation at the end of it all. 

Something else we'll have to live with temporarily is the counters moving away from the wall. Before, the trim was sealed and connected the walls to the counters. Once they raised the room up, the counters broke away from the trim all the way down the length of the wall.

The counters have also split apart where they were connected in the center. You can see the caulking stretched and there is now a huge gap where they once met. The cabinet drawers are harder to open because they hit each other when you try to open them.

It's hard to feel like the foundation work was worth the money when there is so much more that needs to be fixed. But hopefully this is the first step in getting our kitchen renovated (building a new wall has got to be an improvement, right? Even if there were some setbacks throughout the process and it ended up being a huge headache.) I'm not too thrilled that it's almost winter and we'll most likely have to wait until the weather warms up to really do some big improvements. But I guess temporarily we will have to live with the "aftermath" of the initial foundation work. And we'll have lots more work to do!

P.S. - Happy 5 1/2 years to Trent and I today. Time has flown by! Before long we will be celebrating 10 1/2 :). 

Foundation: Back to Work

They were back on the foundation today. The crew came later this afternoon after Trent got home from work. Trent was finally able to talk to one of the supervisors about our concerns, which we think helped put our minds at ease a little bit and got us back on track. Trent was also able to talk to the guys in the crew and get through to them EXACTLY what we wanted to happen. He signed a paper today that said that they were going to try and raise the kitchen side of the house. Finally! It was a good sign too, that the charge on the paper said $0.00. I hope they don't charge extra for raising the house, since that's what we wanted in the first place!

Since the guys got here late today, they were only able to work for a couple of hours. But they started raising the house a little bit at a time, and we think they've raised it around an inch or so. Not a whole lot of progress, but good news is that they'll be back tomorrow morning around 8 am. Bad news...Trent won't be there, and neither will I. I'm hoping all goes smoothly! They said they were going to keep watching the inside and making sure everything is good as they raise it. 

Here is what the foundation looks like today:

And here's what it looked like before they rebuilt the whole wall:

Once they get the house raised up, they'll finish the wall completely and then backfill all of the dirt. I came home today as they were still raising it a little bit and it was a little scary being in the house while they were working on it! You could hear some kind of a cracking sound...they told us that walls might crack and we told them, go ahead and do it, since we're going to be ripping out the whole kitchen anyway! We know that we're going to have work to do once the foundation work is done, but the important part is that we'll have a place to start. Hopefully things will be more level and easier to work with. I hope they can raise it a couple more inches....we'll see what happens tomorrow!

Another Foundation Update

Hope everyone is having a great weekend. Just popping in to share a quick update on how the foundation work is going. And, well, we haven't had any work done on it this week. The crew was supposed to come back to finish up on Friday, but we've gotten a lot of rain this week, so we got a call from the office saying that they weren't going to be back until Monday. Trent talked with the lady over the phone expressing some of the concerns we still have (like making sure that the kitchen will be raised when it is finished). She said she would talk to the guy's supervisor and he would contact us. We've been playing phone tag with him and are still waiting to hear something.

I hope things will turn out well and we won't get any extra charges to do something that we thought was already going to be done.

Right now we still have a "construction zone" in our yard. I am really hoping by the end of this week our kitchen will be straightened out and the wall will be finished.... And things will be better than where we started!

Decisions, Decisions...

So, I mentioned the other day that I'm finally about to become the proud new owner of an iPhone! I have been waiting what seems like years for this. (Let's face it, it probably has been years.) November 8th is the day my cellular carrier will finally carry the iPhone. (Hello, US Cellular what have you been waiting for?) But now comes the hardest decision I've had to make in a really long time...choosing a case. I figure I might as well start picking one now, since it might take a while to arrive if I order it online. So which do I choose? So many cute ones! After looking around, these are my current favorites:

1. Pie for Breakfast case, Emily Rickard - from Society 6, $35
2. Asking for Directions case, Emily Rickard - from Society 6, $35
3. DANNIJO case - from Shop Bop, $98 (This one is a bit out of my price range, but isn't it pretty?)
4. Glitter Jubilee case, Kate Spade New York - from Nordstrom, $40
5. Le Pavilion case, Kate Spade New York - from Nordstrom, $40
6. Paint Strokes case, from Rifle Paper co., $36
7. Lyla case, Tory Burch, from Shop Bop, $60
8. Pastel Leaves case from shopampersand on Etsy, $39

I cannot wait to get my iPhone next week! I know I'll love it! I'll keep you updated with which case I choose. :)


**UPDATE: I  finally got my iphone, and I got the 2nd case above - "Asking for Directions" by Emily Rickard, bought on Society 6. I love it!! 

Our Pumpkins Through the Years

Happy Halloween! Hope yours is a SPOOKY one. Mwahaha! Oh...who am I kidding. I will be working today, then handing out candy for the little kiddies tonight. So scary, I know. On another note, I cannot believe this will be Trent and I's 6th Halloween together. Seriously, I had to recount like 3 times. So I thought it would be fun to go back and reminisce a little, and show our pumpkins throughout the years.

I don't think we carved pumpkins together in 2008. This is the only picture I have from that year, and it is the pumpkin Trent carved. It's a special one, because it was for his Mom. I remember him sending me the picture message. She was extremely sick at that time, and unfortunately passed the day after Halloween - November 1 of that year. Janice loved Mickey Mouse, so this pumpkin was Trent's small gesture to make her smile. I'm sure she loved it.

In 2009 we carved pumpkins at my house at college. Cubbies themed, of course! Mine is the top one (I still remember screwing up on that letter B), and Trent's is on the bottom.

In 2010, we carved pumpkins in "our house." I hadn't officially moved in yet, but we had already fully gutted the living room and were rebuilding it, and were just about to start on the bedroom. We carved them in the empty bedroom. I had a cold and my nose wouldn't stop running. My pumpkin is of course the cat, Trent's is the headless horseman. Check out the picture of the porch - the green door, the new posts that hadn't been painted yet, the absence of the porch railing, the old motion censor light...so much has changed!

By 2011 we had been living in the house together for almost a year. We had a little Halloween photo shoot with our pumpkins in the living room. We used the camera timer and everything. No big deal.

Last year I got a little creative with my pumpkin and went with the spider theme. It turned out pretty awesome, and creepy. The things you can do with just a few plastic spiders and a hot glue gun...

And of course this year we went a different route, and instead of carving our pumpkins, we drilled them! I got to use a hand drill for the first time EVER, and it was actually pretty fun. I think they turned out awesome. You can see the play-by-play of how we did them here.

All in all, it's safe to say we've had some pretty fun and memorable pumpkin carving sessions together over the years. So which pumpkins do you like the best? I have to say this year's might be my favorite, just because they're so different, and I didn't have to try and perfect my knife carving skills (which kind of suck).

Happy HOWLoween everyone!

Pumpkin Patch Fun

A couple of weeks ago, we visited Country Corner, the local pumpkin patch and farmers market. This place is really huge! They really pull out all the stops - They have a corn maze, a pumpkin cannon, hayrack rides, and of course a bunch of stuff for kids, like face painting and even a cow train that moos (yep I was pretty jealous I didn't get to ride that thing). We went here a few years ago and picked out some pumpkins, but I've been wanting to go back, since we didn't really explore too much the first time. I regret not taking more pictures, but all I had on me was my cell phone. Trent took a couple of good ones on his iPhone, though. 

It was a little chilly that day due to the wind, and the pumpkin patch area was pretty dried up and picked over, but it was fun walking around and taking in all of the lovely sights of fall. I admit it felt a little weird going there without any kids. I told Trent we should've borrowed one of his nieces or nephews for the day just so we could look like we came there to take pictures of our kids with the pumpkins. :p

Here's a photo of Trent from the first time we visited a couple of years back:

Back then we thought we would pick out the biggest and best pumpkins we could find. Little did we know they are priced by the pound! We've learned a little since then...Best to get the free ones from Grandpa and Grandma's patch. :)

Thus, this year, I just decided to buy a few little mini pumpkins and a couple of gourds. Total money spent was less than $5. Much better! Here's me hauling my loot:

Hey, it was a heavy load! ;)

And finally, here is one Trent snapped of me when I wasn't ready (of course!):

Luckily, though, I think it turned out pretty cool. We officially discovered photo filters on the iPhone. And speaking of iPhones...I have one of the few cellular companies that doesn't sell them (hint- US Cellular) - however, November 8th the iPhone is finally coming! Picture me standing in line and pacing back and forth ready to trample anyone ahead of me to get me a new phone! I've been waiting for this moment for what seems like years. Get ready to help me choose a cover!! I'm already debating between a few different ones....this will be hard. :)

Drilled Pumpkins

Well, after snowing earlier last week, I'm happy to say that this weekend has been really nice for fall! Sunny and almost 60 degrees. Very nice compared to the freezing temps and snow (yuck!) we got last week. With the nice weather, Trent and I decided to carve drill pumpkins outside on the porch yesterday. They turned out pretty awesome, I'd say!

This is the first time I've ever used a drill on a pumpkin (or at all, really), but I've seen so many cool ones on Pinterest that I had to try it myself! It was actually pretty easy! Here's how it went down:

I started with my pumpkin - we got all of our pumpkins from Grandma and Grandpa's pumpkin patch this year.

Then I used Trent's drill bit set, which had a scale like this, to mark where I wanted all of the holes to be. I just used the scale as kind of a "stencil" to draw on all the holes with a black washable marker. The sizes of drill bits I used to make my design, from smallest to largest, were: 3/16, 19/64, and 3/8.

I went in kind of a zig-zag pattern, alternating between large and small...after I started drilling I added 1 more row of really small holes that I just freehanded for an extra "pop."

Trent showed me how to use the drill (I've never really used one before). At first it was weird but I got used to it quickly. I'm sure it's much easier to drill through a pumpkin then a wall or a board or something!

I did the biggest holes first, then went to the smaller ones. It is pretty messy, so I recommend doing this outside on newspapers! The pumpkin guts kind of splash out a little with each hole. I didn't wipe them off until the end, though, because the wetness will wash the marker off.

I was pretty proud of myself for using the drill all by myself!

After drilling all of the holes, we gutted the pumpkin like usual. (Not my favorite part!) And here's the finished product....

Isn't it cute?

Now to Trent's pumpkin. Here he is with his pumpkin before he drilled - you can kind of see the outline he drew on with a marker. He drew an outline of flames, then filled in the flame with drilled holes.

Unlike me, he had of course used a drill before. You can see the pro in action...

And here's how they both turned out...

 

 They look pretty cool at night on our porch, too!

Has anyone else carved pumpkins with a drill? I would love to see how yours turned out!

Linked to: Suburbs Mama, Tatertots and Jello, The Pin Junkie, Domestic Superhero, Liz Marie Blog, Twelve O Eight.