Foundations
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The foundation from the back side.
Something really exciting happened the week before last. The foundation on the house was finished! In two days time the project went from being very much on hold, to finally able to move forward. The foundation is the key to everything that happens with the rest of the house, and with the brick work finally done, the dirt can be worked around the house and plans can be made for little things like porches and an accessibility ramp. Once that work is done, then grass, trees and flowers can be planted, the clothesline, privy and pump can be set and the fence can go up across the front of the house. Of course we will have a little bit of work yet to do on the inside of the house, and then there is the siding and the roof to work on, but having the foundation in limbo has held all of these things up. It was not due to any one problem or person, it just happened that way.
This house has known several foundations in its lifetime. As to the first foundations the cabins originally sat on, we do not really know. That part of the description was not in Heinrich Egge's diary. We do know that the major support beams under the house are quite large, but what was put under them remains a mystery.
If you look at the photograph gallery that show the house at various points in time, you will see the brick foundation from about the 1880 period just after the two cabins were joined together. This foundation was quite high, and it required the side and front porches to be several steps up from the ground level. Tall brick pillars at the side porch appear to be about waist height of the woman in the picture and there are seven steps up to the front porch.
In 1920, the photographs show the house sitting on a new foundation of large concrete blocks — not the plain ones we are used to seeing today, but the ones that look to be carved as if to resemble stone. It looks like there are now five or six steps up from the ground to the back porch and a similar number on the front.
In 1932 the house is moved away from the open sewer ditch and relocated on the Stuhr property, gaining yet another new foundation. This one is very similar to the previous foundation, with concrete block that attempts to mimic stone, and five steps up to the front porch. The side porch is gone, but the new side entrance on the opposite side boasts a door that is set half way in the foundation and half way in the new side addition. This is the foundation the house sat on when I first visited the house. It was a very sturdy foundation, and there was support under all the key locations under both cabin areas.
In 2010, the house was moved from its foundation, and for the next two years would rest on steel beams and wood cribbing in a city holding area while it awaited its fate. This was a precarious time for the house, and the underside of the building was exposed to the elements. No doubt this played a role in all the nails that were driven in the floor rusting, and that made them soooo easy to pull out.
When it became clear that the house would be moved to the museum, a red brick foundation was chosen to resemble the foundation the house sat on in the 1880s and 90s. The red brick faced a back wall of concrete block, with the concrete block providing the bulk of the support for the structure. Red brick can be very soft, and would in time deteriorate under the load of the house. In December of 2012, the majority of its new foundation was ready on the museum grounds. I say majority because when you move a house you have to leave spaces for the steel beams to nestle down so that the house can finally come to rest on the foundation. The house movers were very efficient and the house found its way onto the grounds on one day and was safely perched on her foundation the next. December is not a good time of year to finish brick work, so completing the foundation would have to wait. 2013 say some work on filling the holes in the foundation, but there was not enough brick.
Finally in the spring of 2014, more of the brick needed to complete the foundation was acquired and in June, the foundation was finally completed. Hopefully, this will be the last time that the old girl will need a new foundation, and now we can get busy on everything else!