Our house on stilts

We found a contractor to replace our garage wall and have been waiting patiently for him to have time to do it. It's a good sign that he's busy in this economy, isn't it?

Our garage is in the walk-out level, with our living room directly above it.



Wednesday they came and got started. They propped up the living room, then knocked out the old wall. They were able to leave most of the very bottom row of blocks in place but found they even had to replace a small portion of the footings at the front corner. I found out when I wandered through once and he wanted to talk to me. He shared those words every homeowner just loves to hear:

"It's gonna be a little more than the quote I gave you."

They finished the partial row they're working on in this picture before quitting for the day. They got the rest of the wall in today and will be back tomorrow to put in the drainage stuff and sealcoat the wall.

It's exciting to be getting a major job off the list. Of course, now we're talking about what to do with the hillside the garage is built into. We can't put all that clay back up against the wall so we have to build some sort of retaining wall so we can backfill with sand.

The joys of home repair...kind of like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie...