Foundation walls, Day 2

Our foundation is completely framed up, save for a "doorway" where we left out a few studs for ease of getting in and out, a foot wide course of OSB (oriented strand board) and a few nuts that need to be tightened down to the anchor bolts. It's beautiful! We hauled a BCI (engineered floor joist) up just because we could. Tomorrow we'll set them all in place, nail the plywood sheathing around the perimeter and then be ready to lay down the deck! A floor! We're one man short of our usual crew of three, so we're moving a little slower, but we're still accomplishing real visual progress. It was too damn hot and sunny today however. It makes me miss working in the freezing cold rain. Oh well, whatever the weather, it gives Dad and I a chance to agree that we're plenty glad we're not working somewhere like Florida. I'm sweating and complaining if it gets much over 60.

Foundation walls, Day 1

We raised foundation walls today, phew! We're doing an all weather wood foundation on top of the cement footing instead of a full cement foundation or pilings. Our crawl space will be 5 feet instead of 4 to make room for our back-up water storage tank (the big white thing on the left). We are planning to get a well dug, but due to the wetlands issues we have to wait to get the proper waivers signed before we can begin on that. It may take months, so in the mean time we'll use the big water storage tank and have water delivered.

The foundation footing

We successfully poured our concrete footing today. It's a beauty! It's been raining solid for a week (or more...) but the sun arrived just in time to have a lovely day of concrete. Dad calculated the yardage perfectly and we had just enough cement to do the footing plus a nice little pad that will be in the crawl space under where the trap-door and ladder will sit. Darling daughter stopped by for a visit and to lend her hands and feet to the project.

Let the building begin!

Well, sort of. We've been delayed by all the rain, since the bulldozer can't do it's job if it's sinking in mud. The pictures here were taken a week or so back after all the trees were felled and stumps cleared, but as of today, we've got a big hole, a gravel pad laid and are ready to build our footing forms tomorrow. We may have to let things dry out over the weekend and pour our concrete footing on Monday, but I'd love to get it poured Saturday....it's all weather dependant though. The other pictures were taken a while back when we went out to the lumber mill to "sticker" our spruce to be used as siding. Stickering is the process of stacking the wood on "sticks" in order to let the air circulate, thus creating a straighter, dryer board.