Gotta Love Steel

 Finally, the steel is going in!  I don't think were going to get to pour before the end of the month though. 
The plastic is in the footing to help the concrete cure slower, according to the contractor.  I think it's to keep the OSB and Sheetrock (yes, I said Sheetrock) forms dry so that they won't break when the concrete is poured.  I am watching this process and hoping Tommy has done this before.  I think that it will be okay because it will all be back-filled with sand.

Tommy has a good start on the steel.  But, I am betting it will be two more days before we pour.

Expert Inspection

Now we've brought in the expert.  First, she has to search the grounds for anything laying around that she might need to take care of (like lunch that may have missed a worker's mouth).

Then she makes sure that the footings aren't too deep, because she is afraid that she couldn't get out.  

Then she says "Momma that is enough of this!  If you put me in that hole so I can pretend to inspect it...I will wake you up at 3 A.M. every night for the next six months!"

Okay! Okay!  Enough torturing the dog. (Daisy says thank you Sherry.)  

We are slowly getting there.  Footers dug, pier holes dug, forms going up.  Who knows maybe we will pour concrete before next month.

Foundational Education

It is always amazing to me just how much dirt you can get from a small area.  The pile in the background is from scraping the grass off of an area 35'x45' only an inch or two deep.

What I did expect, was for the cats to love playing in the fresh dirt...and they did.

Here we are today. What I didn't expect was to find topsoil 2' down in the entire foundation.  I don't know if it had been trucked in or if the gods were just smiling on us.  If it had all been the clay that we were expecting, this part of the project would have taken much longer.  As it is we are already having to deal with a couple of minor mishaps.

Mishap number 2 (I'll get to 1 in a minute) We did not realize that the water line to the barn was right across the back corner of the house.  So, after some scrambling to turn off  Niagara Falls and some digging to find and re-route the line we are back in business.

Mishap 1 is that the two outside 45' beams are only 35' apart and they needed to be 36' apart to take into account the rock ledge, which in our case will be used for a porch ledge.  But Tommy (our contractor) has a solution; which I will attempt to explain to you in the picture below.

Picture "A" is a cross section of what the the beam was going to look like.  The ledge on the left is where the porch joists would go. The middle is where the metal building would go and the ledge on the right would hold the floor joists for the inside of the house.  Now the beam is going to look like picture "B"; everything will all just shift over 5 1/2". This way we won't lose a foot of interior floor space and wall space.  The ledge that is cantilevered out over the ground will just have to be fortified with extra re-bar.

Re-digging would probably cause more problems and this fix will be fairly simple. (fingers crossed)

We Have Activity!

Finally!!  It has only been a month since we signed the contract, but since we also wrote a check, it made it seem like 7 years.  Anyway, I feel like I can blog again.  I was beginning to get a little depressed, not sleeping, not thinking to clearly.  (No I have not been drinking)   
                                                            Not much to look at yet, if you click on the picture you might be able to see the string line.  It was very interesting to watch Tommy set the perimeter. I have never seen it done like that before.  Click here to to see an explanation of how he did it. 

It just does my heart good to see some equipment in the yard.  I actually slept last night.  That was the first time in almost a month that I slept past 3:00.