Not sure I would do it, but my friends Dakota (of The Old History Project) and Chris (who lived at Hayslope for a while) crawled under the old house the other day.
They didn’t find much – Dakota tells me it’ll take a few more trips to get down far enough – but they did turn up some nails, a broken cup, a very interesting blue rock, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon (I think it might have been a Sleestack).
Even without a lot of amazing finds, their Excellent Adventure gave us our first really good look at the underside of the house – the piling stones, the support beams, the floor beams, the floor itself, and of course the base of the chimney. And all of that was pretty amazing all by itself!
First off, not bad for a 237-year-old house. There’s damage, as would be expected, but what there is is very much reparable. And the floors! They’re really looking good. Guess it helps to be up off the ground, plus old James Roddye built this thing on the perfect spot to avoid water.
When you’re on the property, it’s easy to see the house is on a slight rise and that the land slopes away from it in all directions. Underneath, that’s pretty obvious too, judging by the complete lack of water damage down there.
I had an inspector check it out last fall, and he said he was impressed with how little damage there was, particularly from water. He did find termite damage, and that’s gonna have to be repaired, but it could have been much, much worse. And we had termite treatment done last time I was up, so we’re good to go there.
The guys’ trip down under confirmed what we already knew – the worst damage is on the newer sections added by Escoe Thomason in the 1930s. The foundations under those parts are really bad, and as a result, those sections will have to come off.
We were already planning for that. It’s good to actually see what we’re dealing with, though, and to know that we’re thinking in the right direction.
The guys got a terrific look at the base of the kitchen chimney, making us wonder just how the whole thing was constructed. There’s a floor support beam across some of the chimney brick, and one of the main supports ends a couple inches from the brick. And it’s BIG.
It’s also possible that the outside of the chimney we can see is a reconstruction, although it does appear that it’s more or less in the same position and design as it was to begin – it’s visible in the old photo of the house.
It was a little like Christmas morning when these photos started coming in and we could actually see what’s under there. Maybe I will crawl under myself …
There’ll be more explorin’ to come! Oh, and if you’d like to see the video of this exploration, here it is: