This is an exciting week at the work site and it’s only Tuesday! Yesterday morning, Ryan Crowell’s team of carpenters worked under a cold bright sky building the first floor walls of the ell.

The crew worked fast, though not as fast as they appear in this time lapse photography, shot at 10 second intervals. Note the house is still hovering over the new foundation.

In the afternoon, just few minutes before we arrived to see it happen, Jeff Blake of Fox & Sons lowered the farmhouse onto the new foundation, matching the sills within a fraction of an inch.

We entered the old house for the first time since July and took a look around. As predicted there was some buckling of the old horsehair plaster in the parlor caused, not by the move itself, but by the flattening of the warped and previously sagging wooden sills. According to Jeff, wood has memory and now that it is resting on a level surface, it will “remember” its former shape.

Down in the basement, we were happy to see one of the three concrete block piers needed to support the chimney stack within reach of the ceiling. Now that the house is down, the masons can finish their work.

On Tuesday, the carpenters began to attach the house to the sills with strapping.

And, they continued their work on the stick-built ell, making good progress despite the freezing temperatures and a brisk wind.

Meanwhile, Nils who has steadfastly help me battle bittersweet, enlisted me to help him with his pet project, salvaging the antique handmade bricks from the old basement. We used a special brick hammer (Thank you, Jery!) to knock off plaster and the mortar that once held them together. Then we sorted the bricks into three categories: broken, salvageable with cleaning, and re-useable.

We salvaged about 100 more bricks for our mason to use on the new basement walls. Saving these bricks is one of the ways we are preserving history. We know that these bricks were manufactured at the turn of the 19th century in the first brick factory in nearby Lovell.

At the end of the day, the crew cleaned up and went home.