Like Paint Drying

Over the past few weeks, we have been radio silent because we have been busy watching our cement dry. For as fascinating of a process that it has been, the pace seems to have slowed significantly, with the same process being repeated for the third time now.
    (1) Tie Rebar
    (2) Set Form Boards
    (3) Pour Cement
    (4) Remove form boards
    (5) Repeat

In our last post, we showed the preparations being made for the pouring of the footings.  That pour occurred on June 20, after receiving the go-ahead from the City Inspector a few days prior.

In the picture, you can see the stacks of form boards ready to make up the walls.  So, a day or two later, the footing forms were stripped.

Next began the long process of setting up the form boards for the foundation walls.

Step 1: Tie Rebar

The tying of the rebar was the first glimpse of the real outline of the home, up to the first floor.  It gave us a sense of depth and volume to the house.

Step 2: Install Form Boards

Notice the site looks a bit like a movie set for the Goonies.

As the form boards went up, at a snails pace, the site got more and more littered with boards, concrete and coffee cups.  In the intermediate, the house looked like a bit of a penitentiary.

Step 2.5:  Repeat steps 1 and 2, but add tons of scaffolding and supports.

Step 3/4:  Pour Cement and Remove Form Boards

We were originally told that the whole process of building the walls would take about 1 week, but there were a number of complicating factors, that increased the timeline by about an extra week.  Most significantly, it became very difficult to set the form boards on the tall parts of the wall, which stand at over 12 ft.  As a result, scaffolding had to be built for the workers to get up high, and the work was painstakingly slow.

After a little bit of cleanup on the site, we're left with an enduring excitement about the next steps.  From here, we'll do some combination of the following in no particular order:

• Install some plumbing/drainage in the house before the concrete slab is poured.
• Install drainage around the backside of the house.
• Conduct a "partial" backfill, filling dirt up the back and sides of the house to a depth of about 4'.
• Pour the concrete slab.

Albert will be back on site with his heavy equipment sometime in the next week or two, moving dirt and digging holes for drainage.  We'll be on-site as much as possible helping out with the dirty work in between. 

Beginning now, it feels like the daily updates are a bit of minutia, but we'll certainly try to do a better job of documenting the little lessons learned along the way.

Next Up:  More dirt and concrete.