A slow 2 weeks...Garage slab was poured

Well, these last two weeks were rather boring. They finished backfilling and then they compacted the garage area and the area for the front porch and back patio with a special compactable soil.

They then put some gravel and rebar in the garage area preparing it for the slab to be poured. Then, it sat for about a week.

Garage compacted

Front porch compacted

Back patio compacted

Garage with gravel and rebar

We'd drive by every day and see nothing, which was disappointing and a little frustrating. Then, one morning after dropping my son off for school I swung by the property and saw the trucks and guys working. I stood and watched them work for a while. I'm sure they thought I was crazy. It was about 40 degrees, SUPER windy, which makes the cold a million times worse and I was in a t-shirt and basketball shorts. I always appreciate watching people do a good job at whatever they are trained to do. These guys worked fast and as a team. I chatted with them for a bit and then had to get home and get back to what I needed to get done.

I was happy to see one truck.

When the other one showed up and they were pouring at the same time I was pretty impressed with the teamwork from these guys.

They had a really cool way of getting the grade. They had big nails with "L" shaped brackets secured to them at a certain height and the bracket fit right into a long aluminum thing in the shape of a 2x4 that was about 10 feet long.

Before even half of the concrete had been poured they were working on smoothing it out.

Started turning white as it dried out.

A day later they came back and cut some lines in the concrete.

This was 5 days ago. No news on the next steps. Lumber should be next and framing but we have started looking at fixtures for plumbing so they can start to frame it out correctly.

Hopefully they'll start the framing soon. We were told the framers that our general contractor uses are the best in the area but that they were a few weeks out. This was back at the time we met to order our windows and exterior doors so maybe in the next week or two. I'm hoping! When not much goes it feels like things are dragging out from day to day, which made the last 2 weeks, a slow 2 weeks!

Stem Walls and Windows

They poured the concrete into the forms early last week and took them off within a day. They then came back and cleaned up the job site and let the concrete cure for the rest of the week. I love the view here facing that sunset! While we were waiting for the concrete to cure we met with our builder and the distributor that they use for their windows and exterior doors. They had bid out the windows based on the plans and we were meeting to go over everything and clarify questions. Before the meeting I reviewed the plans and compared it to the bid and found that they had missed one of windows in a guest bathroom and the bid had mentioned that two windows shown on the elevation plans were not on the actual floor plans and so we had to be pretty thorough. They had the windows drawn in as casement windows but in my mind I had always imagined single hung windows. I didn't know what these were called but I visited the Anderson Windows website and as I looked around I found o...

Backfilling

Not a ton to report this week. They are working on backfilling. They have to backfill the garage with compactable soil and will then pour the slab in the garage. They also have to fill the areas where we will have our front porch and back patio with the compactable soil but the rest of the stuff can be backfilled with regular soil. Here are some pictures of the progress. You can't really tell from this picture above, but there is quite a slope down from the house into the back yard and I'm going to have to figure out how to landscape that... The weather was spring-y and crappy this last week so I thought the blue sky was a nice one to end on. The weather is supposed to change from 50's and rainy to the 70's and sunny come April so we are looking forward to that! This last picture is the most recent one from earlier today.

Cranes and Trusses

The crane was scheduled for Tuesday so on Monday they got things ready. Early Tuesday morning they were cranking. Here's the crane from far away. The crane in action. View of the back dinning room. Great room with trusses. Great room as seen from the entry way. The upstairs bedrooms were done with this little perch of what became a hallway. This is the "before" so you can appreciate the after. They put the trusses on the upstairs bedrooms over the entryway and you can see that below. Trusses over the main living area and some of the trusses over the garage where there is some more living space. The crane was rented for 5 hours on Tuesday and this is what they got done. They will get the crane again this week and they are hoping to be done with the trusses at that point. They put up the front, east facing, wall of the hallway. Same thing from inside the garage. Back, west facing, wall of the hallway was done. Starting to push out over the garage. This...

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