The Demolition Begins

When my wife and I were considering what to do first with a limited budget we really wanted to install a new high-end kitchen and a few new bathrooms. We got quite far along in terms of kitchen design with our architect (Jace Levinson of JACE Architecture), but always had this nagging concern at the back of our minds about the condition of our foundation. The rear right corner of the house sagged quite badly and after further investigation we determined that we only had about 12-18 inches of clearance below the floor boards; the brick foundation's lime mortar had erroded away and we had some dry rot damage. Given the risk of significant future earthquakes (despite relatively minor damage from the 1906 and 1989 earthquakes to the house), we changed directions and postponed the kitchen and decided to lift the house and install a new concrete slab with seismic retrofit to the ground level. Since we were installing a new slab and the entire ground floor would need to be gutted, we decided that we would install radiant floor heating in the slab and into the ceiling (to heat the second floor).