Look what I found!

[MoonShadows]

This summer we celebrate 20 years living in this house.

OOPS! Hit the wrong button. There is more to tell. I'll add it in the next post. Stay tuned.

 

[MoonShadows]

The original part of the house was built in 1840. It has had many additions, both out and up, over the years. We have added new siding and removed the old slate roof last year and put on a new green metal roof, and made many other improvements.

There are no straight lines in this old house. Even the floor joists under the original part are ash tree trunks, some still have the bark on them. No new project or repair is ever easy when you own an old house.

That brings me to the topic of this thread.

After 20 years of having a door in the dining room that went to no where, we decided to put a little deck on the back...just an 8 x 8 that we could have coffee on in the morning or relax after a long day looking out on our field and woods, watching our chickens or some of the other wild animals in the area like turkeys, dear and even an occasional black bear. Note the door to no where.

Now, in the "back yard", there is an old cistern that was used many, many years ago. They piped water up from the natural spring on the property, filtered it through the cistern, and it was piped into the house.

So, when I spoke to our contractor, I told him he was probably going to hit the old clay pipes that ran from the cistern to the house, and he did when digging the first pier, but the ground was solid underneath, so we dodged a bullet there.

What we never expected when digging for the next pier were slabs of concrete and a buried concrete wall about 3 feet down. The back hoe struggled with the largest slab of concrete.

And, underneath it, right where the 2nd pier has to be placed was a 25 foot deep well!

If we didn't have bad luck, we would have no luck at all!

We still want to build the deck, and no matter where we try to dig on this side, we run into concrete problems....so, we have decided to fill in the well with stone and build on that.

Oh, and the cistern?

Well, that pit isn't quite as deep, but it is 3x wider than the well. For safety sake, we have decided to fill that in as well.

Right now, as I sit here typing this, we are waiting for our first truck load of what will probably be 30 to 40 tons of rock needed to fill these two pits.

Looks like most of the cost for this deck is going to be below ground!

Stay tuned for more.

 

[MoonShadows]

The first truck just arrived. It is probably going to take 4 of these to do the job.

 

[Nyboy]

What a great old house !!! Looks like you maintain it very well!! I have never done a large home project that didn't run into a problem ( problem = money )

 

[journey11]

Wow, that is really interesting. I've never seen the inside of an old hand-dug well. My mom would never let me get close enough.

Your house is beautiful. I love all of the native stone.

We live in an 1942 farmhouse that has been partially remodeled by a previous owner. Still more to do, but we've not found time/money to do it yet. I know what you mean about no straight lines! Some of the lumber in our house was re-purposed from an even older house. Lots of rough cut joists and such.

 

[MoonShadows]

I know what you mean about repurposed. We have another small house on our property that we rent to an elderly woman. The owner of our house built it during WWII for his parents. The skeleton of the house is an old barn frame held together with wood pegs. The sheathing on the outside walls is all from shipping crates from the printing company the guy worked for; and, the windows, before they were replaced, were the original windows from the Stroudsburg Public Library after they put in new windows in the early 1940's. The woman who lived there when we first moved in, and before we bought the property, used to call it her Patchwork Palace.

 

[Nyboy]

Moonshadow your house sounds like mine, Masterbed faces the road and has a picture window. Thats what he had when ready to put in window.

 

[ducks4you]

Are you 100% SURE that the cistern isn't still being fed by that spring? It's free water, just the pump. NOT criticizing, but I don't think I would have filled it in.

 

[MoonShadows]

Nah...I found the pipe coming all the way up from the spring (about 300 yards downhill in ravine in our field) a few years after we moved in. Cut the pipe into 6' sections to use for tomato poles. Been using them ever since!

 

[MoonShadows]

Didn't get a chance to take pics yesterday, but they filled the well and cistern with 40 tons of rock and all the dirt they dug up the day before....filled with glass, metal, etc. So, we had to get a truck load of dirt as well. The piers are poured and the deck building starts on Monday. I will probably need another truck load of crusher run for the driveway and another truck load of top soil when all is said and done.