The inevitable drama begins

Well, it couldn't all be easy, could it? Last week, the s#&% hit the fan, when the contractor on the backhouse repair project started work. His guys started to take down the bricks at the bulging part around the lintels, and discovered, much to their dismay, that this brick wall was a bearing wall and what they were removing was holding up the roof. (In the picture above, you can see a rafter in the top left corner. That's drywall showing on the other side of the framing.)

Thing was, long before I got involved in the project, the owner had commissioned an engineer's report. She probably said "I had an engineer come look at everything" 27 times in the presence of the contractor while we were discussing the work with him. Having only come into this mess two days before, I just assumed the contractor had seen the engineer's report. He had not. Had he asked for it, he would have seen the following: "All roof and ceiling joist that frame into this wall will need to be temporarily shored prior to beginning any of the removals."

Why he didn't ask for the report when he knew it existed was much more about cockiness than about incompetence. The guy knows his stuff—so well, in fact, that he assumed that this house was constructed like every other house of its era in the neighborhood—with the beams running side-to-side, not front-to-back. But this being a backhouse, it's actually half the depth of a regular house—wider than it is deep. So it was likely much easier for the builder in the 1840s to use 20-foot beams front-to-back, rather than 25-foot beams side-to-side.

Long story short, there was a flurry of calls to engineers and shoring specialists. One engineer I met early in the morning just stood on the scaffolding (trussed up in a rope and harness) staring with his jaw dropped. "This is as good as a collapse," he said. "No, this is a collapse."

Now it's a different project, requiring drawings, and sealed letters, and  visits from the Building Department. The tenant is temporarily sleeping on a blow-up mattress in the totally empty front house, which is awaiting its renters. I've been running to the site before work, at lunchtime, and over the weekend, trying to make sure things are still standing.

So far, so good. But I hope my luck holds up. At least the owner is taking it all in stride, and handling things with a very zen attitude. I wish I could be more like her!

Earlier: Piling the hats on