If you own a historic home in Montgomery — a Garden District Victorian, an Old Cloverdale bungalow, a craftsman in Cottage Hill, an antebellum survivor downtown — you have a specific kind of foundation that needs a specific kind of expertise to repair.
Pier and beam construction was the standard for Southern homes from before the Civil War through the 1940s. It’s well-suited to our climate and soil when properly maintained. The problem is that “properly maintained” rarely happens for the full life of these homes. By the time most owners think about the foundation, sixty to a hundred and fifty years of neglect has accumulated.
What’s Different About Pier and Beam
Unlike a slab home, a pier and beam home distributes its weight across discrete points — the piers — with wooden beams spanning between them and floor joists above. This makes it easier to repair (you can fix one section without affecting another), easier to access for plumbing and electrical work (everything’s in the crawl space), and more forgiving of soil movement (each pier can be adjusted independently).
But it also means there are dozens of individual structural elements that can fail, and the failure modes are complex.
The original piers were typically:
- Brick piers with lime-based mortar, often without proper footings
- Stacked stone piers, especially common in the oldest Montgomery homes
- Concrete piers in homes built after the 1920s
- Cypress or heart pine posts in some of the oldest construction (yes, really)
What We Look For
Every pier and beam restoration starts with a complete inspection of the crawl space. We document:
- Each pier’s condition, plumbness, and load
- Sill plate and rim joist condition (these are usually the most rotted)
- Main girder condition and joist hangers
- Subfloor condition where accessible
- Termite damage history and current activity
- Moisture intrusion patterns
- Plumbing leaks and history
- Insulation condition (often just gone in old homes)
We provide a written report with photographs of each significant issue. For historic homes, this report itself is valuable — it gives you a baseline against which to measure future change.
How We Restore
A typical pier and beam restoration is performed in stages:
Stage 1: Stabilization. If the home is actively settling, we install temporary supports and stop the movement.
Stage 2: Pier repair or replacement. We don’t replace historic piers we don’t have to. Where original brick or stone piers can be tuckpointed and stabilized, we do that. Where they’ve failed beyond repair, we install new piers using materials and dimensions that match the originals as closely as practical.
Stage 3: Beam and sill plate repair. Rotted wood members are sistered with pressure-treated lumber, or replaced section by section using carefully managed jacking. We use period-appropriate dimensions where the joinery requires it.
Stage 4: Leveling. The home is brought back to or near its original elevation, taking care not to introduce new stress to the framing above (which has settled into its current shape over decades).
Stage 5: Moisture control. Drainage is addressed, vapor barrier installed, ventilation evaluated.
Stage 6: Finish. The crawl space is left clean, accessible, and documented for future maintenance.
Why It Matters Who Does This Work
A pier and beam restoration done wrong can permanently damage a historic home. Common mistakes by non-specialist contractors:
- Over-leveling. Bringing a 100-year-old home back to perfectly level can crack plaster walls, separate trim from frames, and stress the entire upper structure. Subtle, gradual leveling is the right approach.
- Modern materials in inappropriate locations. Steel beams in the wrong place change load paths.
- Cutting historic timbers without understanding what they’re carrying.
- Removing original ventilation without addressing moisture another way.
We approach historic homes with the assumption that the original builders knew what they were doing for the time, and that our job is to repair their work — not redesign it.
Service Areas
We restore pier and beam foundations throughout Montgomery’s historic districts:
- Garden District — Victorian and Edwardian homes from the late 1800s and early 1900s
- Old Cloverdale — turn-of-the-century cottages and bungalows
- Cloverdale Idlewild — 1920s and 30s craftsman and Tudor homes
- Cottage Hill — pre-WWII frame houses
- Capitol Heights — early 1900s frame construction
- Highland Avenue corridor — older homes with original construction
- Selected antebellum homes in central Montgomery
We’ve worked on homes on the National Register and homes that might as well be. We respect what’s there and we know how to repair it.
Call (555) 555-5555 for a free inspection.