1403 3 Ave N property

This is a house built in 1906 at 1403 3 Ave. N., Coalbanks (later to become Lethbridge), AB, Canada. It was the same year the Lethbridge Viaduct (commonly called the High Level Bridge) was built. It is one of the only two-storey houses built in the area. It’s been added on to four times but still maintains close to its original look. I bought the house in Dec. 2021 as a rental property. It has a 3-bedroom suite on the main floor and a one-bedroom suite on the second. This blog is an account of all that we (FT and I) have done to make it rentable. Read about the main or 2nd floor (“up”) by going to that category. Comments are welcome (but moderated)!

NE corner beam installed

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It has been a sore spot in this house for ages.  The NE corner of the house has been cleared of all the concrete they poured.  It looks like they only did it as a stop-gap measure to prevent further house slumping.  It didn’t work!  Instead, this giant chunk of concrete, weighing probably 400 lbs (180kg), was being held up by the house. 

Now that that has been removed, along with all the bricks in the bathroom wall (eastern part of north wall), the corner of the house is considerably lighter.  I reckon to weight to be somewhere around 1000 lbs (450kg).  Because of this, we are now able to remove the old, rotten beam install the beam in that corner.  It spans 10′ (3m) and will have three teleposts. 

This is what the concrete looks like now, one day after it was poured. 

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more cement, NE corner

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More cement!  This time, in the northeast corner of the original 4-square building.  This is to support the telepost and new beam. 

 

Now we wait 30 days to cure completely, 4-7 days before we can put any weight on it.  This means that semi-complete levelling cannot take place for another month.  I say semi-complete as it will not be completely level until the living room / bathroom add-on is raised. 

Or razed.  🙁 

new timber

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I got two new 12′ (25.4m) 6×6 beams and a 2×10 20′ (6.096m).  One of the beams will go in the NE corner of the original 4-square house.  The 20′ will become a floor joist sistered alongside an original next to the soon-to-be 2nd floor staircase. 

Here is the rotten 6×6 beam in that same corner, soon-to-be cut out. 

east wall rim joist support footing concrete hole

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That’s a long title, isn’t it? 

The rim joist on the east wall of the original 4-square house has cracked.  When?  Hard to say.  Why?  Easy.  Too much pressure was put on it many years ago from a support column in the first floor.  Raising square-corner butt joint joists were raised up just recently, but the split widened as there was nothing under that portion of it to support it, where the 1st floor support column is. 

So today we dug a new area for a new footing.  I did the digging and hauling of 20L buckets to the stairs, D from next door hauled the buckets to HFT, and HFT hauled the wheel-barrow to the back.  “Are we nearing the end?” I’d hear every now and then.  “Almost!” I would shout. 

 

So then what?  Fill it with concrete.  We mixed one US gallon hot water from the SRV on the water heater, four shovels of cement (blasted 40kg bags! (danged 88 lbs.)), eight shovels of sand, and four shovels of gravel (mixed with sand).  Very scientificy, I know – especially as we had to add a little more of this or a little more of that.  We got about 3.5″ of concrete.  More tomorrow, if the weather holds out. 

 

The after-hours cleanup was also fun. 

leaky outside tap

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In mixing concrete for the side patio, we hooked the hose up on west the side of the house.  It looks like it was put in in the 1950s.  The faucet leaks continually when turned on.  Since the main floor kitchen sink is now against an exterior wall, I think we should put in a new frost-free hose bib there.  It only makes sense to put it there as it would be more central to the rest of the property (grass, shrubs, potential garden). 

stairway to below, rotten beams

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My left knee is sore.  Bounding up and down the dirt ‘steps’ to the basement is a chore.  One cannot simply walk upstairs to the main floor with a bucket of dirt as there are no real steps. 

So FHT and I build some stringers.  The first one has cracks in it but seems to be stable. 

With the second one, on the other hand, steps actually broke off in my hand.  Splits in the wood made it impossible to keep stable steps in place, let alone have them bear weight.  HFT suggested we add supports to the side of the stringer rather than abandoning the stringer altogether.  (No pic yet.  I’ll post later.) 

In the mean time, we unloaded the remaining gravel into the sidewalk hole, wrapped up the cement bags, and worked below on another support beam.  (Pics later.) 

The support beam was a challenge.  It simply refused to go into place.  It eventually did.  We need that beam there to cut out and replace the rotten one along the edge of the house. 

Next:  dig more dirt out to fit in the stringers.  More knee-breaking work. 

2nd footing poured

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Two days ago we rented an electric jack hammer and gasoline-powered auger, so I bored a hole what I thought was 2 feet deep.  It turns out to only be about 18″ deep.  Good enough for a footing, considering it is now about 30″ long!  Trying to keep at a reasonable length using a shovel was a challenge as it was all sand and collapsed in.  I augured this.  (Get it?  Auger, augur?  Look it up.) 

So now I have a 12″ by 30″ by 20″ deep footing.  It is long enough to place two teleposts atop it – one permanent, one temporary while the rest of the corner of the building is exhumed.

It will likely take a month of Sundays to cure.  I should put a thermal camera on it to see if any reactions are going on within it.  In the mean time, before any other digging and removing of slumped soil happens, we wait, as this is where the next beam will be placed. 

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what a pane

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I finally got a piece of glass for the front porch of the house.  The roofing company accidentally broke the window as they were throwing down refuse from the old roof.  The same guy who came to tell me, on a different day, that he put his foot through the ceiling of the porch also told me about the broken glass. 

 

I told them not to worry about it as I had another pane in the basement, but it turns out someone else broke that one.  $25 later, it is now replaced.  Needs putty though. 

roof bits poking up

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My neighbour pointed this out to me.  He thought maybe I poked the roof up from down below in the ceiling.  Nope, not me.  What’s happening here?  Why is this poking up from the roof? 

 

Update:  It turns out the last guy there told his boss that the roofing project had been finished.  It wasn’t.  There wasn’t even a cap on the peak!