I’m Gonna Jack you Up

We interrupt this radio silence for a little blegging.

It woud appear that Nine Mile Hill is swallowing my house.  Or at least half of it. 

After the fire in 2002, our house was gutted and rebuilt from the inside out.  The right half of the house (what we now call the “new half”) was completely destroyed, so even the exterior facing (stone) was built from scratch.  The left half (or “old half”) was simply gutted – the exterior remained (Crab Orchard stone is darned near indestructable).

For years now, I’ve noticed cracks in the exterior wall on the old half.  For the most part, we assumed this was due to the intense heat of the fire (we had appliances in the opposite end of the house from where the actual fire was – literally melt).  Yet, most of that was wishful thinking.  We have a section of sidewalk – otherwise known as “The lawsuit waiting to happen” that sunk a good three or four inches.

Yet, even that was explainable: the sidewalk sunk in the exact spot where the sewer was installed in the 90’s.  I’ve gotta fix that, but first thing’s first.

Just in the last month, the cracks in the old part of the house have gotten much bigger.  In one spot, it’s about a half inch wide!  For those of you who are curious, no, I haven’t yet called the company that did the blasting at the new Harding Academy fields.  I’ll get around to it, but right now, I’m like a politician: I’ve waited till the problem got too big to ignore, and now I’m throwing money at it.

So, I need foundation repair.  And my experience tells me I could very easily get ripped off here.  Repair people (both home and automotive) can see me coming a mile away.  many times, I find out years later that I was given more repair than I actually needed, or shoddy work, or was grossly overcharged, or even the recieved wrong repair.  Ignorance is very dangerous in a case like this.

So help me here: have any of you had any experience with the big gus, folks like Olshan?  Do they do good work, and are they generally honest?  Or should I go with a smaller company?  (I also have bad experiences when referred to such-and-such’s brother in law – almost as bad as being ripped off by the big guys).  The only local guy I trust is Susie’s husband.

How much money are we talking about here, on average?  Thousands? Tens of Thousands?  If any of you have had this done before, I’d like to know what it cost so I’ll know if I’m getting a fair estimate later.

I REALLY don’t have the money for this right now, but the alternative would truly be a disaster.  This is my bedroom that’s falling into the mountain, after all.

When I think of more action in my bedroom, this is NOT what I have in mind 🙂