Underhouse supports

In what seems like an eternity ago (but was not quite two years), I had a discussion with Willie about adding foundation supports to our house. He did, and so far, everything seems fine; the house held up well under the huge loads of snow on the roof and there's no obvious signs of settling.

While on one of my forays underneath the house this summer, I found one concrete plinth that Wille hadn't added a support to. I decided to handle this one myself, and looked on the web for some sort of product I could use.

Soon enough, I found the Ellis company in Oklahoma, "shoring and bracing specialists since 1951". I bought a timber jack, designed for a 4x4 piece of lumber which I could tighten under the house and provide one extra support.

I ordered and carried it from Dallas to Stockholm last month when Rutger and I were out. However, there was one snag- the metric lumber I had here didn't fit! I needed a good old American 4x4.

So when we visited Grant's school for parent's day, We visited the local Home Depot and some exceedingly nice folks cut me a piece of wood to measure. (I had measured it in centimeters and of course there wasn't one metric ruler in the whole store. But one of the younger clerks had an app on his iPhone to convert for me.) 

So into my luggage went my North Carolina souvenir, and we carried it out on this visit. I am happy to report it fit perfectly, and in only a couple of minutes, I was able to tighten the jack and provide the house one more contact with our island below.