As we near the half-way mark, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank our contractor — Modillion Construction who have been with us throughout this fire saga and have been handling a difficult job really well. Could not have done it without them.

There are a bunch of old beams that were pulled out during the structural repair last week, hoping we can use these for something — maybe a chance to make some awesome furniture from a bunch of old-growth wood.

Shortly we’ll have to start picking materials with the designers. First up was windows and next up is what we will be using to cover the lower level exterior walls. We have an option of a heritage style cedar siding, which requires more maintenance and some painting, or a hardiboard siding which is pretty much maintenance free. Decisions, decisions.

A neat find from the crew was an old vaseline jar. Daria did a bit of research that points to it being a second generation bottle from the early 1900s — about the time the house was built, and worth maybe $10 on eBay to an interested collector. “Chesebrough”, as written on the jar, was the guy who invented vaseline — a by-product of oil well production, that was often used by well workers when they burned or cut themselves (you healed faster not because it had medicinal properties but because it kept dirt out of the injured area). Sir Robert Augustus Chesebrough, who died at 96 years old, apparently ate a teaspoon of it each day and claimed it was the reason for his long life.

Over the next two weeks the crew will be doing demolition on the ground floor walls; starting to excavate for the exterior footings and do the forms for the footings/foundation. I’ll try to get some shots this week of the house with the lower walls gone.

The big project this week was the removal of the char from all the wood. A crew from On Side Restoration did this work using a process called “soda blasting”. Much like sandblasting, it removes the bad material, leaving the good material behind. It’s pretty amazing to see the difference between what we started with and now. It’s really hard to tell that a fire even happened in the house. Our contractor saved a chunk of beam for us as we plan to have some of it framed to remember this fire event.

Sadly, despite there being taped off seals around all the ducts and plastic everywhere, the house was quite a mess. There will definitely be some cleanup to do from this. The good news is that there was a lot more wood left than we expected to see. With the char all gone now, the joists and subfloor have been sealed off (that’s the white you see in the photos below).

The crew has started digging up the slab and making holes (4ft x 4ft and about the same depth) for the cribs that will be used to lift the house. Next week there’s more digging to be done, we the restructuring of the main floor joists begins.