When we last left you, dear reader, the forms for the foundation were in the process of being set up. Well, they got completed. There is a LOT of heavy metal interred in our yard, now! Everything is level and perfect. All the rebar is tied, and set on little blocks of concrete. It looks beautiful. (... the eye of the beholder)
(In case you're wondering, those orange things are to cover the pointy-ends of the sticking-out rebar. It's a safety thing, and on our site we have already once had occasion to be grateful for them!)
Even DH thought it was beautiful.
Sam and Nathan spent quite a bit of time fixing, and then fixing again, and then fixing again some sprinkler plumbing in the front that kept spouting new leaks. The final solution was quite intricate, but effective...
Nathan got all the dirt that had been moved away from the queen palm tree back to where it belonged, and put the pretty lava rocks back in position. He said that the advantage to using lava rock in landscaping is that it's 'light and easy to move'... I didn't really think so!
Another morning, Sam enjoyed a nutritious breakfast before starting work...
Da DUM... but then Sam did a couple of measurements, and found that Bob, the "foundation guy" had mistakenly set everything 4 1/2 inches higher than called for in the plans! Yikes! This would throw everything off, and could theoretically mean that eveything that had been done would need to be redone! After some calls to the architect, Sam and Bob had a meeting.
It was discovered that Bob had intentionally set everything taller, as to avoid an unsightly corner of the old foundation poking through at the corners of the floor of the new garage. Everything will be ok. The architect said "no problem". In the end, the only thing this means is that the tippy-top of the house, instead of being 7 inches below the maximum height allowable, will be a mere 1 inch below the maximum height allowable! But, disaster averted. All's well that ends well. It wasn't a bug, it was a feature. And all that jazz.
In the meantime, Sam and Nathan crawled under the house (in blistering heat) to deal with updating the plumbing. This was the project that grew and grew and grew. Originally, they were going to replace just a couple of crucial pieces of pipe- but when they discovered what bad shape one thing was in, they had to replace that, which led them to discover that something else wasn't as it should be... and then Sam was standing on the roof of the house tugging up the 3" x 15 feet cast-iron vent-pipe, while Nathan crept around on the rafters in the attic (in the blistering heat), trying to avoid putting a foot through the drywall, cutting away with a sawzall so there would be enough space for the flanges on the vent-pipe to go through... you know how it goes. In the end, we 'lost' the toilet in what is the guest bathroom, and will be the pantry- to make it work again would've been too much of a hassle, and it's going to be torn down in a couple of months anyway!
Alas, I don't have pictures of all the rotted-out cast-iron pipe that Nathan dragged- slithering on his belly- from under the house. (I couldn't even lift it off the ground getting my whole back into it.) But now we have perfect plumbing... Something that we didn't have before. It's interesting how corners can be cut by professionals when they are certain that nobody will be crawling under the house to check!
In the midst of all this, Sam somehow hurt his leg. Nothing too serious, but quite a scrape. This is the 'mystery' injury, since Sam won't tell me how he did it!
SO... injuries and changes and plumbing aside, we were ready to pour concrete! And pour we did:
Then we waited for the concrete to dry. It gives off quite a bit of heat as it cures. The slower it cures, the stronger it is... so Sam got a special super-duper hose attachment to make watering-down the concrete more fun. This thing has POWER! Indeed, it was so much fun just to turn it on and off and feel the kick-back, that Michelle couldn't resist coming over and playing with it!
Last Saturday, Sam took a break from construction... but not from home-improvement! We had to disconnect the air conditioning a couple of weeks ago, and the insane heat we'd been experiencing finally drove him crazy. He took an old window air-conditioner that we had in the tent in the backyard, stuck it in the bedrooom patio-door, and cut down an old garage-door to size to fill the gap!
Aaaaahhh... we didn't want to leave the bedroom all weekend!
Once the concrete had cured long enough (i.e. Monday the 24th) the moment beam was installed. This is a huge steel structure that had to be created off-site- its sole purpose is to prevent minor earthquake damage. Sam was quite proud of the fact that even though it was made off-site, all of the holes matched up perfectly with the screws emerging from the concrete, and that it sat level, square and plumb immediately! There are few things as satisfying as something done-right-the-first-time paying off!
Once the moment beam was up, we began to get a real sense of the hugeness of this undertaking... and Sam began to get extremely excited about how big the new garage would be!
Occasionally, during all this, Sam did take a break...
Whew! That was a huge post. I'll try to stay on top of new developments... in the meantime, here is a picture of Sioux doing my favorite trick: looking cute!
Hopefully next we'll have a guest appearance by Sam himself to recount some of the behind-the-scenes drama... and then we start pouring the concrete for the foundation footings!
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