The Foundation

I finally got to get my hands dirty and do some actual work on the house.  After all the "supervising" it felt good to do some physical labor.

65 cubic yards of concrete is a lot!  6 cement mixers full.

The forms were stripped yesterday.

I spent this morning tarring the walls.  I should write in to Dirty Jobs.

What do you do when your only way into the porch foundation falls in the mud?

This.

Water, Mud, and Concrete Forms

Despite the little mishap yesterday we're still on track to pour concrete tomorrow, remove the forms and waterproof the walls on Thursday, back fill early next week and be ready to frame by the middle of next week.

 The forms went up today, but first we had to get rid of all the water that hadn't drained in the 4 days since the last rain.  Lots of clay = lots of wet muck.

This is the excavator that fell into the hole yesterday.  It was bailing out the water one bucket at a time today.

The damage to the footing from the excavator hit after the debris was removed.

The almost complete forms (no wall in the corner where the footing had to be rebuilt yet).

Excavators and Landslides

The forms were taken off the footings today.  They were filling the hole (swimming pool?) with stone when the dirt wall gave out and the excavator slid into the hole at us.  Luckily it didn't completely tip over or hit/crush anyone because it was stopped by the footing.  But as it climbed back out (pretty remarkable to watch!) the corner of the family room got broken off.  So much for a solid foundation.   Hopefully it can be repaired/replaced easily.  I'll find out tomorrow. 

Footings and Closings

 The digging wasn't quite finished yesterday, so they came back today to finish the forms and have the concrete delivered.  A near major mess-up was narrowly avoided as the garage footings hadn't been dug deep enough.  Luckily I caught the problem when I stopped by yesterday afternoon just before the diggers took off. 
 The footings were poured (just before the rain started) today.  Now you can see the footprint of the entire house.

erik

p.s.  This week we finished packing all our stuff into a storage unit.  We moved into the in-laws basement officially last night.  Today also happened to be the closing on our house in Holden, and it almost didn't happen because we forgot to take out a few items from the attic/shed.  3 more trips between Holden and Auburn, narrowly avoiding bouncing my checks to the concrete guys (thanks for the bail-out Auntie Sarah), and an afternoon trying to get homeowner's insurance on a non-existent house filled out the rest of today.  It has been a hectic week....

The Plans

I decided to draw the plans myself (no computers - graph paper and pencil), so I was a little worried I wouldn't get a building permit approved. But, with a little help from my wonderful mother-in-law, the permitting process went fairly smoothly. We got our permit and the cellar hole will be ready for a foundation by the middle of the week.

The Well

After a long wait we finally got the well drilled!

Lot Clearing

Once we were fairly certain we'd sell our house we went ahead with clearing the trees. And with a little help from the girls we got this:

The Land: pre-clearing

When we bought the lot back in May it looked like this: