My mexico concrete skills came in handy. We patched concrete in a doorway where we had previously chipped out part of the old foundation. It looks good so far. It amazes me how much working concrete has in common with making brownies and frosting cakes. Don't overmix. A light touch to get a smooth finish.
We trimmed a tree (don't tell our HOA) to make room for our ridge beam to be lifted in by crane. The crew was working on the front entry.
The days are getting longer again and the weather forecast is drier. Yesterday our sales person at home depot remembered me, "you're in here a lot!". Yep. And this weekend we built a wall.
Today we filled in our conduit trenches and graded with a nice even slope away from the house. We used compost made from our yard and kitchen scraps as mulch/topsoil.
Yesterday our crew had a make up day since it was dry after a wet week. We started getting in exterior outlets and lighting. And we made it through what will hopefully be the worst storm of this winter.
I had vowed only to blog about the progress, not to post anything I might regret. I've had trouble knowing what to write recently.
The day before Thanksgiving i found out our job site was robbed. Our contractor is resilient, and our neighbors are amazingly supportive. Lesson learned: keep a list of your serial numbers for your tools.
Then there is the rain. Today is dry, the wood has dried out and I have hope. It's hard to be hopeful as I shop vac the standing water out of the house as I've done a lot over the last month. More rain in the forecast. It will dry out again. I'll try to focus on that.
The framing is coming along well. And more shear wall!
Today we ran conduit, wired an outlet and grounded our box ready for inspection tomorrow.
Since I couldn't get good pictures in the dark, here are some pictures of what the crew accomplished this week. Look closely, they are starting to frame the landing for the staircase.
We spent the morning putting epoxy in cracks in the old part of the foundation. And the afternoon doing more digging for the front porch. It's coming.
They put up the shear wall on the ground floor. It feels like a house again. A new interior wall and new floor joists across the hole left from the chimney.
There's a hole! It's the carve out for the stairwell. We're also getting shear wall. Sorry it's dark.
Now that its getting dark earlier it's hard for me to take pictures on weeknights, so this may be a weekend blog for a while. The downstairs framing is moving ahead steadily. It's great seeing the kitchen floor start to take shape. Our crew tarped the house well before the rain on Friday. For the most part it was a day of cleaning. Puddles, sawdust, nails & screws, etc. Ian painted the board that the electrical box will mount on. I replanted some plants that were "inconvenienced" by the sewer repair.
We cleaned out debris from outside the front door, in anticipation for the porch, organized the scrap lumber pile, moved a pile of green waste and dirt, cleaned up extra concrete near the porch foundation.
The concrete sub removed the last of the formwork, the excess dirt and concrete, and their trash. It feels like we have a yard again.
Moved the electrical box ever so slightly away from the house so that our contractor can frame behind it. We also rerouted our grounding wire so it wouldn't be damaged.
Ian learned to core concrete this weekend and created a beautiful hole. He also cleaned stucco off a wall, not glamorous, but useful. Meanwhile, I put most of a big pile of our former landscaping into the yard waste bin for composting.
