May 2nd, 2007
May2nd-later in the day
WAHOO! we are pumpin’ again. I am sure all the neighbors who have hosed down my kids in the last few days are glad to hear that we have our septic fixed. At $5 per shower per kid, it was getting a little expensive for me
Now I have said this before, but today really was a kinda quiet day. They stripped the forms off the cement foundation walls–they really are little walls about three feet high. There is a place where the wet cement bulged out the form and so the wall looks like it is pregnant. This is at the front door. You can see it in the second picture down in the post from this morning where the white section is bulging out. Kinda cool…makes me realize how heavy that cement was and the forms were at least an inch thick. The cement has to cure another day or so…but the lumber is getting delivered tomorrow for the framing–SO that is great! Andrew thinks we are going to have our under floor inspection on Monday, walls up by Wednesday and MAYBE tearing off the roof and bringing the steel beam in by early the following week. Maybe he is going so quickly bcz he is not happy here…hmmm…can’t imagine that
What else happened today??? I went down to Costco and worked some more on my cabinet design. I actually wanted to look at the lighting, but got sidetracked by the cabinet department…Tiny hiccup in my plan as I have my heart set on my corner sink (that is actually already sitting here in my living room–but it is a 33" apron front sink–and apparently not all cabinet manufacturers make a corner sink base that will hold a 33" apron front sink-HUH??) SO, since it is not an option for me to not have it the way I want it…the search continues. Needless to say, I did not get to lighting today.
Sheri came by to tour the construction zone today–that was nice! She is old hat at all this, but she was sweet and smiled and nodded at all the right times.
All this and I have been working every day this week proctoring the WASL at Bear Creek…you locals will know what that is. For the rest…it is the yearly state mandated standardized testing that our kids in grades 3-10 have to go through…
Till tomorrow–
Haven’t heard back from Andrew yet with whether the electrician is coming or not!!
–hoping this is not a sign of anything ominous. He is a real joker actually—knows all about our project, he knows our neighbor, AND he knows Andrew–which is great–he barely even glanced at the work…so I have lost my eagle eye, which I was kinda counting on as i am just a lowly homeowner who knows nothing more than the 22 books i have read to date on footings, foundations and framing
Photos do not do the event justice…video may not either. There was this ginormous (is that a word) truck with a long boom that was down on the road on the west side of the house at the bottom of the hill. It had what had to be a 100 foot boom on it with a pipe that reached all the way across our property to pump the concrete out of a tube into all the foundation forms. The guy who brought the truck had this little joystick box strapped to his belly and he moved the boom with the flick of his thumb while he walked around the yard. He ws pretty excited (NOT) about me video taping…but I am just a homeowner–what can I say! As always, I am easily impressed by big sexy powerful tools, so this was way cool. Then the yucky part—Andrew got to play in the concrete–Dave manned the tube and where it was spewing concrete, and Andrew got to spread it out and level it. We had a fun little discussion while we were waiting for the concrete truck (and Dave) to arrive about the foundation being level. He assures me it is all going to be level, he has a "chalk line" on the form to follow that he laid out earlier in the day after they were built. We also did discuss the reality being, that since he has to frame on his own foundation, the motivation to have it level is pretty high. Hmmm…I will let you know how it ends up 
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