JUST PICK THIS HOUSE UP

Where to begin?

As a commercial contractor we do not do residential work unless there’s something special about it.

This one was special.

This North Atlanta home along Peachtree Creek was flooded in a series of severe rainfalls over multiple days.

The owner said “Never again”, and wanted someone to rebuild the home comfortably above the flood plain.

Not being one to back down from a challenge, I couldn’t help myself.

But where to begin? There wasn’t a process for a job like this in any text book that I ever saw.

But I knew we could figure it out.

So here’s the plan I came up with:

Step 1. Manage risk obsessively. The contract called for the homeowner to contract with a house mover to raise the house, and we would coordinate our work with his.

The contract also stated that we are not in the house moving business and were held harmless for any loss related to the house mover’s work.

Step 2. Cut the house in half.  The house had a major addition that was essentially a second structure that had to be moved separate from the original house. So the two sections were cut apart.

Step 3. Have the house mover raise the two halves 9′ into the air, one at a time and leave them there for a month or so. This allowed us to demolish the old foundation, and start work under the house.

Step 4. Build a new foundation underneath with the two halves perched high above.  

Step 5. Carefully lower the two halves onto its new foundation.

This was a big day on the project schedule and was a nail biter when it came.

We had sed every ounce of precision we could muster to be certain that the house would come down squarely on the new foundation.

Only one problem – there is typically nothing square about a 70 yr old house – YIKES!!!

But the house landed on the new foundation EXACTLY as we planned.

Step 6. Reconnect the two halves and begin the remodel. Finally!!! The easy part.

Step 7. Exhale.

A surveyor assisted by recording the exact location of every corner of the structure, and those locations were used to form the new footing and foundation walls so that the two halves could be set down in the exact right place.

The finished home looks GREAT!!  

Our surveyors boss said he couldn’t tell that the house wasn’t built this way from the beginning.

The whole house was brought up to current code requirements. It received new everything, not to mention a new view of the old neighborhood!