Pouring the footings

Hard to believe but only a flash of time passed before everything was dug up, rebar placed, and the site was ready to be filled with cement for the footings.

Our builder called to let me know I should meet him on site because the cement trucks would be there around lunchtime.
On site he took a moment to trim and place a couple of pieces of PVC into the north and south footing trenches to be used as a path for plumbing into the foundation. The cement would be poured into the trench soon and the pipe would create a little hole to pass pipes though.

Here's our builder earning some $$:


Here's one of the foundation guys digging to make some room for the pipe. Lots of rebar in that trench.


Minutes later the first cement truck arrived. Our entrance is a bit steep so the driver had to back up the hill to keep the cement from spilling out the back!


Very quickly the guys got to work dumping the cement into the trenches. Then they smoothed the cement flat on top with some wood pieces. In all I think 9 cement trucks arrived, one after the other. Every other cement truck was directed to the opposite corner of the house so they could fill somewhat evenly from both sides of the house instead of dumping everything in the same area and trying to push cement around.
Some pics of the process:





Our genius dog Lucie even managed to fall into the wet cement of one of the footings and was shocked to suddenly be swimming. She could have just asked for a bath...

The cement only needs overnight to dry. The next morning a dozer would push all of the dirt hills from the footing/pier excavation to the side of the pad out of the way and it would be time for stem walls to be built and filled.

TrenchFoot(ings)

Once building starts things roll really quickly, it's unreal.
The chalk lines on the ground didn't last long. The very next morning (Thursday) a crew used a large digging blade with lots of teeth to dig trenches a couple of feet deep where all of the outside walls are going to be on the house.

I don't have any pictures of this happening because it happened before I checked on the site but the evidence was everywhere...massive trenches everywhere, lots of excavated dirt, and a several metal teeth that had broken off of the machine's blade like a shark losing it's teeth after chewing on a particularly tough swimmer. Each tooth was about 6 inches long.

Then a crew placed rebar in the trenches, four bars placed horizontally throughout the entire perimeter of the house for reinforcement of the footings.

Finally a drilling machine began to dig large deep holes for piers. These then got filled with rebar for reinforcement and are the piers that will help hold up the foundation.

The mess of trenches and dirt - no more chalk or flat spots!


Hole-drilling machine:


Close up of two pier holes - there are near where the living room fireplace will be:


Nice clean corner trench on the garage outbuilding:


The perfect footing for what will be a perfect garage (can you tell Ian is updating the blog?):

Starting for real

Well things are real now, and really moving along!
This week we really did what I would call "breaking ground" on the house. Instead of just digging up the ground making room for a house, we added back some cement this week!

Wednesday Ian met with our foundation contractor on the site. We had to determine the "final resting place" of the house and foundation on the pad and mark it so they could get the party started.
-> The first thing they do is put some thin rebar in the ground and tie strings to it.
Using the house plan as a guide they determined the general shape and dimensions of it and made a giant square on the ground.

-> Then our builder and Ian looked at the placement on the pad and the angle of the giant suqare shape in relation to the trees and the house pad to determine the proper final angle to place the house.

-> Using either very trained eyeballs or a 3-4-5 right triangle they made the giant square shape on the ground actually square.

-> Once we determined the final spot for the house the foundation guys really went to work. Using the house floorplan dimensions, a series of nails, a tape measure, and a chalk string, the guys marked every outside dimension of the house.

-> Once they were done with the initial chalk lining they took containers of chalk powder and walked along the lines they had just made dumping light colored chalk to make the lines really stand out. These are the lines the next crew will use to dig trenches for the reinforced cement footings that will hold up our walls.

In the end it looks like they used a giant projector in the sky to project our house plan on the ground and traced it.

Here's an example of the lines on the ground looking North:


Here's a look at the lines facing south. Our neighbor's house it really getting framed fast!




Now that we know where our front porch will be exactly, here's a view of the West from the front porch!

The road is finished... at last... almost...

Two weeks have passed since our last installment of Casa de Suhrstedt and... finally... the road is finished (almost!) We had a few days of super heavy rain, that put things behind our nonexistent schedule, but Bill is bringing the last load of gravel out today to finish up close to the house, and add a little more at the entrance, but THAT'S IT. Yay! I drove up it for the first time last night, and I must admit, it was totally awesome! Bring on the concrete trucks and framers! I'm ready to build a house now!

So, we're going to put up a gate at the entrance this weekend, and rumor has it that our builder will be starting on the stem wall next week. I'm not sure if just putting in the road is considered "breaking ground" so finally we'll have some actual "broke ground" to show for it!

Pictures this week: 1)The road in it's almost-finished state. 2)The road in it's early stages, as piles of gravel that Viv loved climbing around on. 3)Ian's birthday present... his own bridge! 4) Viv helped make this beautiful sign!

So... what are we building?

Bill is still up on our hill, bulldozing away on the the pads and smoothing out the road. I *heard* that some truckloads of gravel will be coming later this week and that the foundation guys are scheduled to start next week. At this point, Ian handles most of the communication with our builder (fun!), and I'm the person usually talking to our banker (less fun, although we really like the guy). I'm hoping that'll change once we get inside the house...

So for now, here's a drawing of what the outside of the house will look like, roughly. Not every brick/rock/shingle was drawn, but you get the idea...

Also, a picture of the floor plan. The plans are so huge that I had to stand up on a chair and take pictures b/c it was too big to scan, so it looks a little wierd. Click on it for a bigger picture. Ian's office will be in the front left corner of the house, Viv is taking the back bedroom on the right, and just to the right of the front door is the room formerly known as a formal dining room. Instead of a cheesy dinette set, it's where the pool table/pinball game/other activities we can think of to lure people over to drink beer will be.

I'm most psyched about my giant laundry room... 13 x 13... I'll have a desk in there, a big round table in the middle of the room, space for my sewing machine, and lots of cabinets for art supplies. Right now I want it to have kind-of a high school science classroom vibe... I'm thinkin' red and grey checkerboard linoleum floors, black counters and at least one wall painted in chalkboard paint (but hopefully no dissected frogs in jars or toxic chemistry sets.)

Not shown is the bonus room above the garage. We're going to put in the stairs and have the drywall moved up there, but until Viv gets bigger and wants more space, we'll probably just use it for glorified Christmas tree storage.

Also, there's another freestanding garage not shown. It'll be located to the left of the house and at 40' x 60' it's Ian's equivalent of the world's coolest laundry room. :)

More Dirt... and a Fire!

Not much new news to report... Bill the Bulldozer Dude worked on the road and the pads for the house and garage all week, and hopefully will be done within a few days. Yesterday (Sunday), Dad was on shift at Station 5, which is the closest fire station to our house. He called at about 3 in the afternoon to tell us that someone had reported seeing smoke on the northeast corner of Westminister and Sorghum Mill (uhhh... that's our spot!) and to give us a heads up that there were fire trucks headed our way!

So Ian went up to the lot with Pop and Momma G in their truck, while Mom, Viv and I hopped in the car to go see what was going on. Our neighbor, who has the lot next to ours was burning some brush and it got a little bit out of hand and caught another pile of brush on fire. The pumper truck and engine were already there when we showed up, and the chief got there a few minutes later. I think they put it out in about five minutes, and I'm sure our new neighbor was a little embarassed because we all rushed up there to find out what happened (although Viv claims that the only reason SHE went was to see Papa, but he was driving the tanker truck yesterday and didn't get called out.) Ian discreetly took a picture (see above) and you can kinda see the fire trucks through all the smoke! :)

This is totally unrelated to the house, but check out Viv's smashing new haircut! Ian took a few pictures of her *driving* the four-wheeler yesterday. She looks so sporty!!

I'll try to get the house plans scanned and uploaded in a few days. Stay tuned...

Let me step back a little bit...

My friend Karen (Hi Karen!) pointed out to me last night that while the pictures were cool, to her they were just a bunch of dirt and rocks. So I wanted to step back a little bit to a few pictures taken in January of this year. The first picture is where the road is now, and the second picture (Ian and Pop gazing into the distance and probably philosophizing about something...) is on the spot where our house will be.

Everything was (and still is) pretty rugged. It's funny, but when Ian and I were trying to figure out where we wanted to build on the farm, we came across this spot and Ian just *knew* it was going to be home. It took a little longer for me to visualize things, but when I got it... I got it. I try to think back to when I was a kid, and I probably crossed this spot a million times in a jeep or truck or on a horse (okay, the horse thing probably only happened a few times!) and never would have thought I'd build a house there.