Lemon Dream Home

There are few things more unsettling than discovering that the foundation of your home is unstable and will need repair. When we moved in we saw some signs of settling and thought that these signs were from long ago during the stages of a new home nestling into its comfy cozy spot. Obviously not something you want your home to do, but certainly something that is relatively common to occur, and does not present any real danger...but maybe some cosmetic markers depending on how much movement occurred. As homeowners you understand this can happen. After all, before we bought the house, the inspector spent two days with a fine tooth comb (or so we thought) inspecting the property and the house, and did not indicate in the slightest that there were any active foundation issues.

Well, that couldn't be further from the truth. You know the doors that won't close just right, oh and the ones that won't close at all; or the quarter inch gap between the baseboards and the floor that we didn't notice until a week after moving in; and the strange crumpling of the drywall in corners of the house; what about the crown molding and separating bead board in the hallway; or maybe the crack forming in the staircase base. These certainly couldn't be new signs of movement could they? Almost 2 years in, and all these indicators have continuously progressed. In the last four to six months, there has been markedly visible increases in these symptoms, sometimes even week to week. Could our house be sinking into the ground? What is going on here?

So we did what any responsible homeowner would do. We called in the professionals to assess what could be going on. After all, we don't know what are all the possible causes nor the possible resolutions. But it is obvious that we have active movement of our foundation. Long story short; two evaluations and exorbitant quotes later; the problem is agreed to be that the spans of the trusses are simply too far apart. The going opinion based on the professionals' review is that we have deflection due to spans that are poorly designed.

But there is one major problem with that assessment. This house was built with no spared expense. The brick was flew in from New England, the crown molding throughout was top notch with something like 40 layers (not sure what that means), the doors, the windows, all some of the most expensive materials. The walls are not just drywall, but the entire home is made up with walls of plywood backed drywall...and that's only the things I can remember at the moment. The point being, if there was so much money and care put into the rest of the house, then why wouldn't the owner that built the home, put the same care into the foundation of the home. This is what didn't sit well with me. Nonetheless, we decided to move forward with the resolution brought to us by the professionals. Install midspan support.