WEEK 12 of House Elevation Project

Once upon a time we had an ordinary house in the suburbs of New York City. Seasons passed, our children flourished, and all seemed well with the world. Then our house suffered through extraordinary amounts of rainfall, on several occasions.

With nowhere else to go, the water rose up and up and up. We grew to appreciate our flood insurance more and more. Until one day when we decided enough was enough. Let’s  fix it so that our house no longer floods. Elevating it above the base flood elevation for our location was the remedy.

RISE ABOVE

As documented all over this website, we did just that. Our house is now elevated well above the litmus test  – the FEMA flood map. But while the rest of the house is elevated with a brand new foundation underneath it, we still need to utilize the garage at ground level. As illustrated in the picture below, the garage in it’s current state is large enough to park a sailboat inside.

PICTURE ABOVE

Sandwiched between the garage and an upstairs bedroom sits an airy attic. In the picture above, the ceiling of the garage is the floor of an attic (as well as a mechanical room toward the back of the garage). This fortunate placement of the attic will allow for the building of an additional interior room. Work has already begun on this project.

After weeks of spending time on the foundation, meticulously placing each cinder block and enduring weeks of painstaking efforts to shore up the last few inches between the new foundation and the house – finally, we have some progress.

Progress that we can see. Progress that feels like we are getting somewhere closer to being ready to move back home.

SIDE VIEW

Note the sides of the house above. You can see where the holes that were created to accommodate the steel beams have been closed. There are still many, many items on the “to-do” list prior to my family residing here again, but this week at least it feels like there has been a big step in that direction.