I am so glad you are back for the next update on our Lake House Fixer Upper.   So far I have given you a tour of the original house and discussed my vision, shown you the inside demo work that was being done and taken you on my first experience using a Bobcat to tear down the back of the house to get ready for the great room expansion. Now we are ready to pour the footing for that expansion and dig in deeper to what can be saved of the original house so we can start to shift to building something instead of tearing it down.

Lake house fixer upper

We had a couple more warm days here in Kansas City so we decided we better get the concrete poured for the new addition on the back of the house.  The first step was to set the forms for the footers.

lake house fixer upper

After the footers were set,  it was time to build the forms for the walls.  We opted for a crawl space under the new addition since we have a full basement under the rest of the house.

lake house fixer upper

Now it’s time for the concrete…woop woop!

Lake House Fixer Upper Demo Continues…

Lake house fixer upper

It’s always a good idea to give the concrete 5-7 days to cure before you start building on it so we went back to demolition.

lake house fixer upper
We were already planning to remove the second story on the left side to open up the great room but as we got further into the demo on the right side, we realized there wasn’t much worth saving.

lake house fixer upper

So there you go…the second floor is gone.  We also had to remove the upstairs sub-floor because remember it was masonite and was swolen and buckled in many places from water.

 

lake house fixer upper

Next we removed all of the doors and windows.  All of the boards around them were completely rotted.

lake house fixer upper

So we started removing the rotten boards and the walls that we were taking out to open the space up.

lake house fixer upper

and more demo…

lake house fixer upper

and more demo…

 

lake house fixer upper

…at some point you have to cut your losses.  This is one of those cases.  Once we removed all of the rotten boards, mold, termite damage, faulty wiring, compromised header boards, and buckled sub-floors…there was nothing left…literally.

So there you have it.  That is what is left of our dream house.  After all was said and done, we saved the foundation, the basement, the main level floor joists and the septic system.

lake house fixer upper

Don’t feel bad for me… I am okay.  You have 2 choices when life gives you lemons…you can give up or make the best lemonade you have ever had.  I choose lemonade. We knew there were problems with this house from the beginning. This was not a flip property by any means. This Lake House Fixer Upper is a labor of love that is being built for our family to enjoy for generations to come.

We weren’t planning on the expense of re-framing an entire house so we will definitely have to take on more of the work ourselves and it may take longer than we had originally expected but it will all be okay. It made no sense to us to be building this wonderful home on top of rotting wood.

We hired a framer and he started framing immediately.

lake house fixer upper

To end on a good note, we had another couple of nice days so we were able to pour the footers for the new porch and garage on the front side of the house. I can report to you that we will have the beginnings of our new lake house taking shape in our next update! See you then!

New addition footings being poured and the demo work continues. More surprises to deal with on our continuing journey of our Lake House Fixer Upper.

If you missed the beginning of our journey check it out here:

lake house front
Lake House Fixer Upper Updates
The 3rd installment of our lake house fixer upper series. It's outside demo time and I get to do something I have never done before! Come check it out!
Lake House Fixer Upper: It’s time to raise the roof