Today the lift occurred. It’s surreal to watch your house being moved up in the air; a truck parked on the verge outside our house with a compressor on it, hoses running into the house, and then jacks gradually expanding and lifting the house up. The process is more delicate and thoughtful than one might expect, with the contractors carefully building stacks of timber under the beams as the jacks move up, a Jenga-like construction done with spirit level and mallet.
The house went up a foot in the air. They added more supports. They jacked it up again. More supports. And again, and now it’s three feet off the ground and ready for the next phase.
Inside the basement there are five more pillars of wood that the house is resting on, along with the beams that have been inserted running east to west and north to south under the house. The front garden is a mess of dirt now, and I suppose the back will be soon as well. Here’s hoping it looks nice at the end.
Late this afternoon, I got the girls to ride their bikes from our AirBnb down to the house. This involved Destroyer forgetting how to ride a bike and then weeping for fifteen minutes, but she recovered once we got to downhills. So I hope she doesn’t utterly hate me (or bicycles) as a result…
Exhausted, with a few laps in the pool under my belt, off to bed now.