MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: LAMBERTVILLE
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We are in Lambertville, NJ. Our mission, if we choose to accept is to take a really old duplex which was built around 1865, tear down half,
and rebuild it bigger and better that it was. Doing this while having only a driveway access and a very small backyard. The Owners, Dr. &
Mrs. Keith Finkral, purchased the right half of this duplex, and hired us to do the impossible. I'm going to put this job on three pages
because it's massive and I have a ton of pictures.
To get a true feel for what's been done here, We have to
start from the beginning. The following pictures are taken
from before the construction got started.
You may notice that all the paragraphs on this page WILL
be left aligned. This is mostly due to the fact that Mrs.
Finkral is a retired teacher from South Hunterdon
Regional High School, and she put the pressure on me not
to center the paragraphs. But....she didn't say nothin
about speelling or gramer..
Now we start the demolition of the
back section. This had to be done with
extreme caution, because of the fact
that the building is well over 100 years
old and we also had to take into
consideration that the common wall
had two really nice (and
accomodating) people living on the
other side of it. So we started from the
roof, and took the back part of the
house apart piece by piece. It was like
surgery.
On every job there are
"Oh My God's" but this
job was an exception. The
"Oh My Gods" started
real early and pretty much
kept going through the
job. One of the first really
big things was finding a
Cistern under the common
wall. It was filled with
stone and capped off.
Now that the demo is finished and only took two weeks
to take it apart by hand, we are ready for the excavator.
But before I go on, let me explain in more detail about
the Cistern. No one knew it was there, not the owners,
the architect, or the neighbors. It was in the crawl space,
and behind a wall, so it was completely hidden and a
surprise to all. We took a measurement...it was about
twelve feet deep and about fifteen feet wide. It sat
directly under the common wall, so half was on our side
and the other half was on the neighbors side. The
township wouldn't let us take it out, so we had to make
some structural changes to accomodate the structure.
Now we begin to dig out for the basement......