House re-leveled……………

Job was completed just before the July 4 holiday. Pier & Beam construction, took the contractor almost 6 seven hour days to complete. Due to excessive afternoon temperatures, they stopped work before 2:30pm everyday. Now working on readjusting all the doors. Have removed 4 family room windows, and reworked the finished openings and reinstalled the windows. Have noticed some paneling that has ‘popped’ off the walls in other rooms, as most likely installed years ago when the house was ‘out of level’. South-east corner of house had dropped 4” from level. Gone are all the ‘waves’ in the floors of the house. Glad it’s done, but turned out to be twice as expensive as planned.

The kicker is, this house was originally 25x70, there are 2 additions(contractor calls them ‘add-ons’), main house has 2x6 studded walls, stucco(cement) interior walls, 2 layers of shingles with metal over those. 2 full baths with 4 inch poured concrete floors, all the original interior walls(10ft ceilings)are sitting on 6 inch high x 4 inch wide cement curbs. The house was so heavy, when attempting to jack up, the floor joists would collapse. So, all joists were ‘sistered’. At final completion the main center beam, was sistered, and 1/2 way between the center beam, and the fountain another new beam was installed on both sides, with 30+ new piers.

Homes in several surrounding counties had settling problems, at one time there were dozens of home ‘Movers’ and ‘Levelers’. Early middle MO homes were built like the old barns, large slab stones on corners and transition regions sitting somewhat in the dirt, very common for frost heaves or differing soils conditions across a floor to settle or thrust. All so much close to surface hydraulic clays as well made it a defined mess to keep even newer full foundation homes level.

Most of the leveler or house mover companies have just disappeared, some changed hands and directions others sliding into general contractor work, still a few along the river bottoms from here to KC. Many homes here sit on near to surface Bedrock, our home included, just south of here is “Stoney Hill” and is a truthful view of the region. The last owners of our farm home is still mostly standing, was in it once where floors are all tilted like a fun house, old stone ‘footers’ visually evident with only a cellar beneath a area of that structure. Is supposedly a log cabin at center of the old house.