expansion joint

It’s definitely moving.

He wasn’t much cop at keeping his mask on straight, and even worse at the two metres thing, but he knew when a house wasn’t for staying put.

Yup, it’s definitely moving, that.

Underpinning is drastic and too hasty. Doing nothing will make the crack gape wider. ‘You cannot solder an abyss with air’, but you can fit an expansion joint. Who knew. Did you, Emily?

First off: an expansion joint between the old and the new. Something that should have been fitted when the work was done, but not to worry, a retrofit is doable, if more inconvenient, messier, than fitting it from the off. An expansion joint allows for movement, because houses move. It could be seasonal, it could be water, it could be worms. Could it be worms? I think I made that bit up. Importantly, If you add what’s new to what’s always been there, the movement isn’t always in the same direction. Obvious, once he said it.

That I have no foundations makes me flinch, and sometimes stare at, sometimes wince at, the thinner crack in the front wall with that permanent line of wet. No foundations are, the man said, surprisingly common.

You wouldn't think it. Curtains will cover that crack.

So, he’ll email the report, with the invoice. He grappled his mask as he left.

I’ll see about fitting an expansion joint. To absorb the gap between old and new. First off.