Floored

A couple of months ago, some of the ceramic tiles in our breakfast area began to pop up suddenly. Kimberly happened to be working from home at the time and she said that when she first heard the popping, it was so loud she thought somebody was throwing rocks at the house. She ran to the kitchen and then saw that it was the tiles popping up and cracking before her very eyes! We had a homebuilder friend of ours come take a look and he thought that perhaps the tile had been installed with a substandard mortar and the normal settling and shifting of the house had caused them to pop up. This sounded plausible and the damage was minimal. At that time, we probably had enough spare tile to have the floor redone correctly.

Last Wednesday, James Bufkin was over for our Wednesday Work Night. He is a structural engineer, so we asked his opinion. He seemed to think the problem might be a bit more serious. He discovered that the floor closest to the exterior wall was raised. He thought that we might have a problem draining water away from that wall. But, the house is built on solid rock and the walls were plumb, so he didn’t seem too alarmed. He told us to dig a hole next to the wall and see if there was water down near the foundation.

On Friday morning, Kim woke me up early. “It’s happening again,” she said. I missed recording the best of it, because I stood around for so long being dumbfounded and sleepy, before remembering that my camera has a video function on it:

Right-click, Save-As (13 MB)

Hearing the floor crackle and pop like a bowl of Rice Crispies was quite strange. I can now totally understand how the poltergeist phenomenon is believed. It really did seem like the floor was alive. It also didn’t take much imagination at that hour of the morning for me to theorize that perhaps our house had been built on top of an Indian burial ground and the dead were now digging their way through our floor for revenge against whitey. At least it seemed plausible at the time. It really was creepy.

All of the tile in the breakfast area and about 1/3 of that in the kitchen is now detached from the slab and/or cracked. There are also two or more cracks in the walls now. Whatever is causing this, it isn’t bad mortar, nor Indian zombies. I predict a lengthy and expensive process as we get to the bottom of this. All will be documented in the new House and Home category, here at jimmypribble.com.

jimmy