You’d be surprised at how time seems to crawl by when you’re trying to find someone to rebuild your foundation when your house is literally sinking under your feet and your door frames, window trim, and walls are visibly splitting at the seams. Even when the cost of your project has the potential to exceed what you paid for the property itself (or 1.5 years of tuition at Harvard or roughly .0002% of what Elon Musk shelled out for Twitter, depending on your frame of reference) there is so much competition for contractors’ time and talent nowadays, you’re lucky to get one to pick up the phone and tell you to piss off, much less listen to your voicemail, return your call or email, or submit a proposal.
Case in point: When I started calling foundation folks at the end of summer 2021 in hopes of setting something up to commence in the spring or summer of 2022, one guy said they’re only doing new construction for the time being, while another said they’re only doing poured foundations. Just our luck we needed a block foundation for an existing home. On the bright side, I thought, if we wait long enough, the house will eventually collapse into a heap, at which point we’ll be looking at new construction with a poured foundation.
Still, one of them was kind enough to refer me to two companies that build block foundations and, of course, I reached out to them both right away. One of them ignored my calls and emails, as well as the note I left on their Facebook page. Now that’s what I call a trifecta. The second called me a week after I left a voice mail and said they’d be out within 2 weeks but didn’t come. Five weeks later, naively hoping they had simply lost my contact information, I called again. To my surprise, they answered on the second ring and told me we were next on their list for an estimate but six months later they still haven’t showed up.
I doubt it’s anything personal. I’m sure it’s just the current market. Though I’m also sure there are some out there who will blame Antifa.
By March of 2022, just as we were on the brink of despair (and, frankly, wondering if we should move all of our household goods to a storage locker and appeal to the goddess Tempestas to send a devastating tornado) the Jarhead came upon a truck owned by a business that specialized in basement and crawlspace repair.
“Check it out,” he said, more or less, as he read the content on their webpage later that day. “These guys will dig a moat around the house, jack up the sagging walls and joists, rip out the old foundation, pour new footings, install some new support beams if we need them, AND build us a nice new block frost wall.”
Ok, but will they return my calls?
Cynical? Maybe.
Because even if I hadn’t already been burned, it sounded a bit too good to be true. Especially when “Joe” returned the Jarhead’s call within 24 hours. I mean, who does that? In 2022 no less?? No one. Literally. NO. ONE.
Was this a scam? Or was it something even more sinister? Like sexism.
Had all those other folks ignored little old me because they assumed a woman wouldn’t have the money to pay for a new foundation? Did they think a woman wouldn’t know a crack from a hole in the ground?
So in addition to being somewhat suspicious I was also hypothetically outraged. But I knew better than to complain. At least out loud. And definitely not in print. At least not until the work was well underway. Even I know better than that.
A-N-Y-W-A-Y within a week we had an appointment. (What?) Within another week we had an estimate. (Are you KIDDING me??) And within two weeks we had a contract and a list of tasks we had get done before the foundation crews could break ground in four weeks (CREWS? As in more than one?? Is this a fairy tale???)
Meanwhile, you’d be surprised at how quickly time speeds by when you have only four weeks in which to get a house ready to have its foundation replaced—especially when those four weeks span the entire month of April, the temperature keep dipping below freezing, and it won’t stop effing snowing. Because it’s Wisconsin.
Despite these challenges, we managed to tear off the decks on the south and west sides of the house. This was a mixed blessing to me since less than a year ago I had power-washed and painted the one to the west. The Jarhead had tried to con me into power-washing and painting the one on the south side back then too, but I somehow managed to have other more pressing chores to do. Thank heaven for small favors.
(Below are two images of the west side of the house. On the left is how it looked when we first bought it. We took out the window in the corner when we had to rebuild that wall due to its bad foundation. The image on the right shows yard with the deck removed so we can replace the rest of the foundation.)
(Below are two images of the south end of the home before (left) and after (right) the deck was removed.)
We also managed to get the windows, doors, stairs, hot tub, decking, and wiring out of the sunroom. The hot tub wasn’t working anyway, and the floor beneath it was plywood over dirt, which tells you there is more concrete in our future.
We also got the front patio slab broken up and hauled away, and the area prepped and framed so the crew could pour us a bigger and properly pitched one. We also got the bottom rows of siding off the house, and the well, septic tank and drain field marked to reduce the likelihood of anyone driving over them with a backhoe, dump truck, or skid steer.
Of course, by ‘we’ I mean the Jarhead, since I have arthritic hands, zero upper body strength, and lack the ability to operate a tractor, a sledge hammer or a cement saw. I did keep him fed and watered, though, and gave him lots of praise, reminders, and opportunities for conversation and headshaking.
Hey, we all need to do our part.
the uncommon blonde 