Beam Me Up!

As it turns out? The way that one keeps one's house from falling down is to build two temporary support walls and then install a steel beam supported by posts that run from the second floor all the way down to the basement.

Let's just put it this way: we would have rather spent the money on an 8-week luxury camping trip in the wilds of Bhutan.

The "beam-fore" pictures: (groan)

Temporary wall #1, in the living room on the first floor (note the Alice-in-Wonderland effect re: our couch, coffee table and television): 

Temporary wall #2, in the basement:





To support the posts, they had to dig into the foundation and build new cement footings. Here's hole #1:





...and hole #2: 

Here's the support post along the chimney in the living room: 

And the one in the wall: 

And here are the support posts in the basement:

All of which brings us to one fairly badass steel beam, which will feature prominently in our steampunk library.