Saturday 2 November 2013

Bricks & Mortar comes UNDONE

A few years ago we decided to buy and Airstream (Heirs'Dream...hubbie heir to half the price, me heir to the love of airplanes, airstreams, trailers, travel and livin' like a Gypsy)Airstream Song by Miranda Lambert
   I even got my guitar out recently and learned to play and sing this song in preparation for "hittin' the road" in our new Silver Bullet. My hubbie retired from police work and started to renovate our basement to put in a rental unit to a) finance our big adventure Full Timing in the Heirs'Dream and b) to have someone living in our little house to take in mail, water grass and comply with insurance requirements to not leave a house vacant.

We tore down some of the siding to start preparing to replace the bar with a kitchen and smelled dampness, dug deeper and found DIRT...sand....instead of concrete walls. To make a long sickening part of the story short, after the opinions of several engineers, many more contractors and a building inspector, we found our house to be close to condemnable...poured concrete foundation was done with contaminated sand and the organic materials had broken down and the walls were now doing the same!
It took us over a year to find the right engineer and contractor but they are now on the job, the little house I love has been shored from below, jacked up to level and tomorrow excavation begins! 
We are over the resistance in believing it's happening to us (and that we had to go back to work to pay for it instead of retiring and going touring in our Airstream) and are positive and excited to watch the process. AND we are actually living in our Airstream, just parked across the street :-) gratefully enjoying a bird's eye view from our generous neighbour's driveway.

....and tonight is Hallowe'en night so this is how it looks from the front. A video from ScAirstream Central!
....but Hallowe'en was nowhere near as scary as the next day when we found out AFTER the construction guys removed the gas meter that the gas had not been shut off, and when they came TO shut it off, that the main valve was NEXT to our beloved Airstream. We were almost a gas explosion Wizard of Ozstream sequel.
Gratefully not and we are off to our lot on the Bay for a couple of days of peaceful by Nature.




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