The excavation went on for roughly a decade.  Okay, maybe three weeks.  That's a lot of James Brown songs.  And I really like James Brown.  Or used to.

The floors were leveled in about a week, after which a battalion of piers were arranged at six-foot intervels beneath the original section of the house.

This took, in our highly technical estimation, forever.  Okay, maybe a couple of weeks. But it was worth it.  After four and a half years learning to walk upright on crooked floors, gradually adjusting our equilibriums to levels befitting sailors, it felt a little weird to walk on level floors.  Weird, but good. 

We were feeling pretty good about things for, oh, it must have been two or three days.