By the time I came in off the road for the Christmas holiday, it was really becoming obvious that the addition I'd had put on the house was showing more than just some isolated cracking from settling. I think I'll always remember distinctly the feeling I got on December 23rd, when I took pad and pen in hand so that I could catalogue all the places that the house was potentially revealing a lack of structural integrity; I ended up being physically ill by the time I'd inspected all the new spaces that were added in this past year's project. I'll be doing some blog posts to highlight these over the coming days and weeks; I also included a description of these in my letter to Peter LaRoque of LaRoque Construction of Mocksville, NC, the general contractor for the project.When Pete and his crew member Robert came to review the list of items I'd written about, they checked the floors and also the main support piers under the house. Most of the problems seemed to be falling along a consistent line, and sure enough, Pete found that the flooring was no longer level and that the support beam had dropped by perhaps as much as a quarter of an inch. The plan is to jack the house up by that diminished amount and to secure it with steel shims. In this picture, it's pretty clear how much the floor has dropped since the baseboard was installed; this is from the powder room.
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