Quick catch-up from Tuesday, then a pause

This is slightly bloggus interruptus, as I only got up to the house Monday evening for a short stint of work on Tuesday before Amelie and I left for Idaho and a school workshop / visit.  If all goes well, next week's blog will show the piers poured!

Muggs had done a bunch of layout and excavated new piers (some of which required unearthing the existing concrete, which despite its impressive mass is underengineered for the column bases and 4 x 6" posts we are going to use.

Apologies for not including the top part of the apparatus in this picture--I temporarily screwed in a block up high on the center post, and after I excised the old protruding stubs and the partly rotten portion of the post, I jacked up the center so that the void under the doors no longer had a sag in the middle.  

Then we jammed in scraps of 4 x 8 pressure treated beam to fill the void, and will bolt and screw this to the last joist to form a good surface on which to secure a new ledger board at the correct height.  At that point we released the jack and let that part of the house settle perceptibly back down.   

We'll fill in these other areas with blocking (after giving them a good once-over with the shop-vac) but won't have to use the jack any more.  Whenever we get the chance we are treating old wood with preservative in hopes of staving off encroachment by critters.

For a change of pace Muggs sat down to do a little further battle with the rose bush, which will be healthier for his ministrations.  He ended up transplanting the lower (much smaller) rose bush, which used to be next to the stairs and which will be covered by the new deck, on the side of the path to the upper gate, with good sun.