After pouring the footings and the stem walls, all of the wood that had been used in making the forms was removed and put in a neat pile- we'll use the good stuff for framing, and the rest as firewood this weekend in Mexico!
Sam and Nathan picked up rebar from Home Depot
And we got a delivery of sand (thank you, Michelle and Ody, for letting us use your driveway again!):
I have to say that the coordination of all of these deliveries is one of the 'silent' components of this project: I don't have oodles of pictures of Sam on the phone, but that is another huge part of the job that he's handling gracefully!
Before we could use the rebar or the sand though, we had to grade and tamp the dirt of the 'garage' so that it was perfectly flat... (The first picture here looks dark because it is dark: Sam works long hours! The second picture was taken the next day, and you can see how flat it is.)
... naturally, this didn't all go perfectly smoothly. Among other things, three sprinkler heads got broken, like this one:
Between the graded dirt and the slab there has to be a layer of sand, then a water barrier (extra-heavy-duty dark saran wrap) and then more sand. Each layer of sand has to be 2 inches deep. So Sam had to measure backwards- from where the top of the slab is supposed to be- to figure out where each level of sand had to end.
Of course the sprinkler heads aren't a big deal, but several little mishaps like these do add up! Of course, when you're frustrated, there's nothing like a nifty new tool to make things better. To make sure that the precision of the height measurements for the sand, etc. was perfect, Sam cobbled together a water level:
Nate tamped the sand once it was down- it was tamped so well that you could (and Sam DID) drive the Bobcat on it and the sand hardly budged!
Here you can see the edge of the water barrier emerging from between two layers of sand:
You might wonder how they knew how high the sand had to be... well, once they measured it, they tied strings at the exact height:
And then they dragged a two-by-four across, pulling away all the extra sand until it was just level with the string.
Here you can see a closeup of 'after' and 'before':
I liked the way the sand looked when it was all smoothed out, so I tried to get artistic! Here's one like a one-hue Rothko...
... and here is a fractal sand mountain...
Ok. Back to work. The next day (yesterday) they started laying out and tying the rebar. First, Sam measured the distance between the rebar coming out of the garage stem-wall, and calculated the half-way point between each, so that the rebar in the slab would be as near to perfectly spaced as possible. He wrote what the distance should be between the rebar pieces on the stem wall:
And once the rebar was laid out, it had to be tied at each crossing. Rebar ties come in cool rolls:
Every time, before they tied, they measured, to ensure that the distance was just right:
Sam got a nifty rebar-tying-tool, but there was only one of them, so a lot of the tying was done by hand- like a twisty tie- but metal! There will be some sore fingers, today.
So for a long time, everyone measured and tied rebar:
Bob built the forms for a mini stem-wall inside the garage...
Sioux interrupted Sam to give him some nice....
... and guarded the construction site...
... but let Michelle in when she stopped by to check out our progress!
Although Sam felt like was kind of hard on people, constantly reminding them that he wanted things done exactly right, he was also good at giving positive feedback. Here, he proclaims that "this looks so beautiful I could cry!"
And it did, indeed, look beautiful.
Today, they poured concrete in the mini stem-wall (foreground) ...
... and they finished tying all the rebar down, as well as building a concrete form for the end of the slab.
Sum total of rebar ties used: over 1000! In addition, we used over 2000 feet of rebar, just in the slab (that's like 2/5ths of a mile).
Whew! I'm not sure about me, but Sam and Nathan certainly deserve a break! We're off to Mexico for a mini-vacation! More when we return...
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