What to do? Is this normal?

House Repair Talk

Help Support House Repair Talk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Interesting.

Looking at the basement photos. The bricks you see from the inside seem flush to the inside face of block wall. The foundation blocks are commonly 8" or 10" thick. So I am not sure those bricks that you are seeing from the inside are the same ones as you are seeing from the outside.

Almost as if somebody decided to insulate the rim joist with bricks instead of insulation (that's just to illustrate what it looks like -- I am not suggesting somebody would actually do that).

Is there a basement window or door or something that you can see if those interior bricks are a different set than the exterior bricks ?
 
It was common years ago to build a “brick” house with an inner layer of 4 inch thick concrete blocks, then a small air space, then the outside layer of bricks.
The trapped air was the only insulation in some of the walls.
Back when furnaces were huge and natural gas and oil were cheap.
Some walls did get furring strips with a thin layer of insulation.
 
It appears that the brick you are seeing inside is simply brick infill that was used to fill the gap between the joists. I do not believe that is the exterior brick you are seeing. Use spray foam to fill the gap and replace the baseboards.
 
This is a puzzle. It appears that (parts of) this house were built long ago. The structural lumber looks like it is over 100 years old. It also appears that the house may have been renovated along the way (several times) with a finish of brick or brick over a block wall. The exterior bricks may have been added. The interior wall may not have been finished all the way to the floor on purpose and a baseboard was installed to hide that area.

Is this an old farm house? It was common to add on to farm houses as the family and needs grew. That could mean that some parts of the house were 120 years old and some parts 80 years old and other pars were 50 years old. That would also have been a time that some additional remodeling would have occurred.

Sometimes they moved houses from one part of a property to another if there was a reason to do so. You could have that here.

If we had full exterior shots of each of the elevations, it would help try to figure this puzzle out.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top