Hey gang, I live in New Orleans and have a "raised basement" home. The foundation is a thin footer around the perimeter. On top of the footer, two courses of brick six bricks high were laid and the exterior walls were set on top of the bricks. The house is 80-100 years old. The bricks are most likely not as old as the house. I have been trying to fix my moisture/musty smell problem. I have removed the bricks on the back of the house and replaced them with poured concrete while replacing 90% of the downstairs rear wall because of termite damage. Now the brick runs the length of both sides of the house. The mortar between the bricks is thin or nonexistent in places. I have sealed the bricks from the outside down to the footer. on the inside, a thin slab (or two thin slabs totalling about 3 to 4 inches thick) was poured covering the two bottom bricks. On the outside of the bricks, I have removed the dirt to try to keep moisture away from the house and have created a four inch deep moat that holds water right up against the brick. There is the background. On one side, I intend to fill the moat with concrete to keep the water off the bricks. The other side is often used as an entrance and I would like to do something more creative and attractive than just pouring concrete. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. The moat runs the length of the house on each side and is about 4" deep and about 18" wide. I need to seal the brick from the inside as well. I think that I could tuck and point the bricks and then seal them, but the gaps in between are small. Any suggestions for a remedy to this? What could I seal it with after filling the gaps? Finally, I want to pull up the carpet and install flooring. Since the slab is so thin and had cracks on one corner where the bathroom is(I repoured cement there, hopefully that will hold together), I thought that I should install a floating floor and glueless would be the easiest. So, I was looking at laminate and possibly hardwood, but I thought for a basement, laminate might be better. Well, if you're reading this, you stuck with me til the end and I appreciate your patience. Some of my questions are phrased as aimless ramblings, so any and all thoughts will be welcome. Thanks in advance for participating in this forum and making it available. Mule

ok, we are buying an old farm house in Nebraska. There is an original old 2 story home (aprox 360 sqft footprint) there is a 2 story addition (aprox 345 sq ft footprint) and a 1 story adition (270 sqft footprint) The house was originally built in the early 1900's. One of the additions is not much older than the original house, and the 1 story addition I think was added in the 30's maybe. There is not much of a basement, and most of the house only has a dirt crawl space. All 3 parts of the house slope one way or another as the foundations either were not right to start with, and have settled since then. The only way that I can really see to fix it would be to lift the house, and have eral footings put in, and a real basement. has anyone done this before? Any idea on the costs? Who do I call? I dont want to do it myself. This is way to big of a project. do I contact a general contractor? or some other kind of contractor or what? Any ideas? Anything would help.