Time to Catch You UP

I haven’t bored you with the details of construction so far.  With the weather and scheduling demands, things have drug out this point.  BUT, things will hopefully pick up speed as we go into next week, so I need to bring you up to speed quickly.

Before I do … yes, we did cook almost all of the meat this weekend and ate lots of it over the weekend and lived to tell about it.  And looking on the positive side, there are lots of meals pre-cooked in the freezer AND we have more scrap metal!!

So, we left off with demolition and cleanup ending on April 24^th. 

Wed, April 25^th – rain; started excavating the basement

Fri, April 27^th – rain; set the forms for the footers.  These are called ‘Form a Drain’ footers.  They are perforated along the inside edge with drain holes at the walkout.  They will stay in place after the concrete is poured.  Gravel will be filled up to the top edge of the form.  Any water will flow into the drain and out of the house (theoretically ;)

Sun, April 29^th – rain

Mon, April 30^th – rain; poured concrete for the footers

Tues, May 1^st – rain

Wed, May 2^nd – rain

Fri, May 4^th – rain

Sat, May 5^th – rain

Mon, May 7^th – rain

Tues, May 8^th – rain

Wed, May 9^th – rain

Fri, May 11^th – They were able to get the forms truck across the construction access (i.e. across the corn field).  So the forms were set for the basement and garage walls. 

Sun, May 13^th – Mother’s Day; rain all day

Tues, May 15^th – Cement trucks were able to get in and pour the walls.  Only one truck got stuck on its way in and we pulled it out with one of our tractors (a green one ;).  We ordered a load of gravel to pour in a spot along the corn field that gets little sun.  That helped.

Wed, May 16^th – Removed the forms from the walls.  There is this strange tunnel between the house and the garage.  We’ve never seen anything like it, but we are assured “it’s how we always do it.”

 My labels are too small ... the top one says "we think we need a pond out here."  The red line depicts where they goofed up the wall ... more on that later.  And at the bottom is the tunnel they runs to the other side of the garage .. no footers!

view out the walkout basement

Thurs, May 17^th – Rough plumbing is set and passes inspection.  This is the plumbing for the basement bathroom and drains that will get buried in concrete.  We measure the placement that night and discover several things are in the wrong place.  The floor drain will be under a wall.  Another drain from the 1^st floor will be in the middle of a closet. 

Fri, May 18^th – Rough plumbing is re-done to plan.

Sat, May 19^th – rain

Sun, May 20^th – The length and shape of the wall adjacent to the garage just didn’t seem right, so we went out that night about 9:30pm with our tape measure and discovered that it was poured wrong. (see picture above).  It was suppose run along a number of feet and then turn for 2’ and then continue on.  Well, it turned about 4’ too soon.  Oops … who needs matching built-in cabinets on both sides of the fireplace?  Yup, they chopped out the space where one of the built-ins would be on the 1^st floor.  We went in to look at the plans trying to figure out how they could have made such a huge mistake when we turned to the foundation page.  There it was … the designer had drawn the foundation page incorrectly, but all the floors were right. 

Mon, May 21^st – I call “Designer Dave” to let him know what happened.  He was very apologetic and agreed to come out to the property to meet with the builder to discuss a solution.  We weren’t going to get the space back in the basement which we could live with, but it had to be fixed on the first floor.  So they decided to pour some extra deep concrete in that area of the garage to create a footer and build the wall out as it was designed.  It isn’t load-bearing, so it should be ok.

I also asked Dave to look at “the tunnel” where no footers were poured.  (It was drawn correctly, the concrete subs just decided not to follow the plans ... ??)  He had issue with the one on the back wall of the garage, so he proposed they pour a make-shift footer under the wall.  Dave modified the drawings and had them back to us that afternoon. 

Tues, May 22^nd – some late night gravel floor prep work started

Wed, May 23^rd – more gravel prep and inspection

gravel poured in garage

Thu, May 24^th – poured basement floor and footer fix on back wall of garage

the dark concrete was poured beneath the back door to the garage as an after the fact footer.

Fri, May 25^th – our builder wasn’t happy that the concrete guy didn’t come back to day to finish prepping the garage floor, so he insisted he at least come out before the day was over to score the basement floor concrete.  We were making bets as to whether or not he’d come out on a Friday before a 3-day weekend. 

About 10:30pm, I hear a noise above the sound of our window fan.  I look out the window and in the pitch dark, I see a glowing light coming up from the basement and a plume of concrete dust hovering over it.  He showed up alright!  It only took him about 30 minutes.  We sent a text message to the builder.

Mon, May 28^th – Memorial Day; I was out with my tape measure after dinner just seeing where my kitchen window would be and discovered that the 2 basement windows beneath our 2 bedroom windows were set (in concrete) in the wrong spot.  One was only off a few inches.  The other was off more than 2’.  Really??  Back to check the drawings.  They all match, so there’s no excuse.  

Originally, these windows were going to be mostly below grade and wouldn’t have been noticeable.  However, the grade has changed since we started, raising the house a bit and the basement windows will be above ground with no window wells.  So short of breaking concrete walls (no), the only other solution is to cover up the zig zag of windows with shrubs. 

I made some “BRIDGE ~ SLOW ~ 3 MPH” signs for either side of our bridge.  Traffic will be increasing and with a ¼ mile long driveway and a 70’ bridge, we can’t have contractors flying up and down the driveway. 

Tues, May 29^th – prepped and compacted concrete in the garage; rain

Wed, May 30^th -concrete was poured in the garage and the first load of lumber arrived, but the framers won't be available until Friday.

Thurs, May 31st - the concrete guy came by about 7:30pm to score the garage floor and is just leaving (around 9:30pm)

That closed out the month of May and the foundation.  It's supposed to rain tonight so I'm not holding out hope for any framing to begin tomorrow. In fact I hear thunder now.   I'll try to post some more pictures this weekend of the finished garage.