Picking up from where we left off,

When we looked at restoring this house to its original look, we decided that the use of modern materials would best suit both our needs for an authentic look and the economic benefits of integrated energy efficient systems.  The roof was an area of special attention. As you can see from the before and after pictures below,  this house has a tile roof.

The picture on the left is the original roof, the picture on the right is the new roof.  The original tile roof, all 6 tons of it, was in bad shape from past storm damage, and was missing nearly all of the ridge caps.  After the old roof was removed, and repairs made to the underlayment, we began the installation of the new roof system that would preserve the look of terra cotta tile.  What you see in the second picture is actually a steel roof.  The roof is constructed of interlocking stamped steel panels that are coated with a proprietary stone blend designed to match the color and tone of clay tile.  The resulting roof is 200% lighter than the original tile roof, and 10 times more durable.  This steel roof is rated for windspeeds up to 120mph, it carries a Class 4 hail warranty, Class A fire warranty, and is warranted by the manufacturer for 50 years. 

The advantage of this steel roof is that it created an air gap between the shingles and the roof deck.  This allows hot air to move by convection out of the top of the ridge, and cool air to be drawn up from under the eaves.  This creates an attic that has an average temperature 20-30 degrees cooler than a conventional asphalt shingle roof.

With the completion of the roof and the stucco, the exterior of the house was secured from the elements.  We could now focus our attention on securing the structural stability of the house.  When we inspected the basement for the first time, we noticed that many of the joists were overspanned.  The plan was made to provide additional steel support to cut the spanned distances in half.  What we soon realized while we were setting new joists was that the main beam of the house had deflected about 2 inches down from level with the foundation.  Fortunately, when they built this house in 1924, they used steel support components, so all we had to do was lift the beam back into level, and install new columns underneath.  The cause of the deflection was undersized piers for the main support columns.  Although the soil was very firm, the weight of the house slowly pushed the columns and piers into the ground. Our solution was pour a new massive pier under every new support column.

As you can see in the pictures above, there are several new columns in place, and in the back of the second picture, you can see a heavy steel shackle next to the wall.  That is the top of a helical pier.  It was decided early on that we were going to lower the basement floor from a shallow 6.5 feet, to a spacious 8 foot.  In order to accomplish this, we had Fasteel pier the entire foundation with their helical pier system.  This was to guard against potential shifting as this foundation had no footing, a common occurrence with a house this old.  Once the piers were in place, we started excavating the soil from under the foundation in sections, pouring footings and wall sections until the entire house was supported by a new oversized footing, and oversized steel reinforced subfoundation.  All told, we excavated by hand, over 136 cubic yards of material from under the house.  The benefit of this was not only a taller basement, but a new front yard.

Previously, when you stepped out of the sunroom door, you could walk only about 4 feet until you started going down the hill.  After depositing all of the excavated material in front of the house, you could now walk 12 feet out from the front of the house before you hit the hill and there was a nice gentle grade down to the walk below the front porch steps.

All of this work to the exterior served to provide a refreshed authentic restoration of this tuscan styled home.  We strove to maintain as many of the original architectural details as possible, particularly with regards to the brick work and the half-timber and stucco on the second story.  It was through the skillful selection and application of modern materials and procedures that results in a very weather resistant and resilient exterior that will continue to protect this house for decades.

Keep tuning in because the next two issues will cover the work that we did on the inside.

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