Backfill! The mountain is finally gone. Left behind is a small hill. After 25 days of not being Abe, to see the garage, it has reemerged along with the giant hosta and several amazing grasses. I remember when I was a gardener and not a contractor!
One of the reasons, besides the never ending rain, that we have not yet cribbed the basement yet is the fact that the eating area addition rests on piles and does not have a basement below it. This has caused major issues and discussion around how we will can have a wall between the eating area piles and the new space. The cribbers can not build a wall if they can’t get all around it and there has to be something to hold the dirt in and create a wall for the basement. We looked at the possibility leaving the cribbing wall on the dirt side permanently (super expensive and no one will do it), the styrofoam block stuff (expensive), or a wood wall. We chose to go with the wood wall, it will be 8 inches thick, waterproofed and ultimately warmer than the concrete. Now as long as they build it properly and there is no way for it to rot, we have a solution. Now if we could only make it stop raining long enough to have it built and installed. Here’s hoping!
Rainiest July on record…great!
It is it pretty hard to do much of anything when the sky keeps pissing on us. Perhaps we aren’t meant to have a new basement and master bedroom. Maybe just maybe, a pool is in order. I do need a new bathing suit for school…hmmm.
Weeping tile and water proofing on the new foundation today. The poor guy who came to do it got caught in another of our crazy July rain storms but still kept on working to get it done. Needless to say, just about as soon as he was done the job and was soaked to the bone and covered in mud and clay…the rains stopped. Great.
The footings survived the night and now we have cribbing walls! The guys were here bright and early loading the cribbing walls in by hand, building the forms and finally, finally they poured concrete into the forms. We have basement walls!! Well, 5 of the 6 we need.
Two weeks of nothing and finally in a small patch of sunlight, we have footings! Of course, not 20 minutes after they pour the concrete and leave a storm arrives. I raced around like a lunatic, borrowing tarps from the neighbours, using our tarps and even using blue recycling bags to cover the fresh footings. No sooner do I finish covering them when the rains stop, leaving me with clay squishing between my toes and being soaked to the bone. The sun burst out and I scrambled back into the mud to now uncover the footings. Fun, fun, fun.
Rain, rain and more rain. I think that if we just stop now and the forecast remains as tiny droplets of negativity, we will just have a 400 square foot swimming pool instead. Maybe we can even make a slide out of clay mountain and call it a day.
So the big dig is done. I can’t believe how big the pit is, is our house really going to be that big?!?! Oh yeah, and J & J have zero privacy from us right now, I’m sure that won’t be a problem for their dogs. 😉
Finley loves the pit, I guess he sees it as a whole new jungle gym to play in. So glad that we could help him out on that one.
Nothing. That’s right, after and super exciting day yesterday with Chad beginning the dig, he didn’t come today. It was a bit of a let down to have started yesterday and going to bed thinking that now finally things are going to happen and then day two be stopped dead, again. Ahh well, I’m sure that this will be the only delay for the whole project. I just said that out loud and in text…we are doomed. I will pay for such thoughts.
Excavation! Chad showed up this afternoon with the mini digger and got to work. I feel like we have been waiting for this day for forever and now we truly have begun!
