Before we bought the Wishful Farmhouse, we walked through it a bunch of times. Like a ton. Our decision was not made quickly. The location was perfect, but there were several things about the house that made us worry. One of the biggest “red flags” was the foundation of the house.
The house sits on a cinder block foundation that was not in great shape. We were concerned about putting a significant about of money into a house that didn’t have a sound foundation. See picture. Yikes! It looked even worse from the inside of the house.
One option was to have several steel I beams installed which would keep the foundation from getting worse, but doesn’t really fix the problem. Think a bandaid. We decided to dig it up and fix it after talking with the company that installed the septic system.Â
So they showed up and dug a giant moat around the entire house. I got a little teary while they were doing this because the night before I was standing right where the backhoe is sitting, sweating my buns off and pulling weeds. That was a waste of time!
We had three of the four sides of the house that had some sort of issue with the foundation, so three of the four sides were dug up. After everything was dug up, the walls were power washed on the outside and the inside of the house.
Tangent – one of the kitties (Everett’s favorite things in the entire world) ended up in the moat. Twice. Everett and Charles both thought it was hilarious to watch Momma crawl down into the moat to retrieve kitties. Momma did not.
The next step was to place 4×4 boards in the basement end to end to put pressure on the outside walls to push them back into place. Because the dirt was no longer pushing up against the foundation, the boards were able to straighten the foundation back out.
Then they coated the wall with this magical QuikWall material. It looks a lot like concrete, but it also has fiberglass mixed into it which makes it stronger and waterproof. This was schmeared on the inside and the outside walls of the foundation.
They brushed it to give it a uniform texture on all of the walls, and Tah-Dah! It looks like a brand new, poured foundation.
This has for sure not been the most exciting part of the remodel, but it was probably one of the most important. Just check out those before and after pics below!!
