Begin at the beginning...

I found this on Facebook today. Perfect...
Off we go, into the rabbit hole.

11 years ago, we bought an old, rundown, Illinois farmhouse looking home on 1 acre, 7 miles from downtown Austin. No neighbors, except the occasional cow or horse. And random coyote. It was perfect.

We knew there were issues with the pier/beam foundation. We had it "leveled," but the job was left undone. One of many, many projects that weren't completed correctly by unscrupulous contractors, but that's in the past. Let's make the beginning be, say, last Monday. Well, a little before...

We've known that our first step in reclaiming this house from its impending collapse was to remove the brick. Gravity had begun that process for us... Well, gravity and the fact that the people who moved this house out here in the 80s didn't bother to put any kind of footing under the brick, but again...that's done and gone.North side...

South side...

So, we asked around and got the name of a contractor from our church secretary. We got a bid, got financing, and got ready. Which brings us to last Monday, August 6. 

Eliseo and his partner showed up before 8:00 and got to work. We should have known then that it was going way too smoothly...

By the end of the day Monday, they'd managed to get the brick off the north side, and about half of the front above the porch. That's when they saw the gap between the house and the porch and realized that we were likely one good windstorm away from having the front porch ripped off...

And that's it for today. Tune in tomorrow for the continuing adventures of Amityville and its construction horrors!