It hasn't been that long since our last post yet things have been happening at a very rapid pace. What we may have not mentioned during our last post is that when our basement was getting dug, we were busy moving out of our house and into Shaun's parents basement. We decided that living with them would be a better choice than trying to build and rent another house at the same time. And we are hoping that it doesn't take us too long to build so a temporary housing solution would be best. So, in all the fun and craziness of moving, we started working on our house. You already saw the hole that was dug, now to put something in it. The day after hole was finished, we started putting up the footing.
We had a really good start and were feeling very good about things until first thing on Saturday morning, about 3 hours before the cement was supposed to show up and we ran into our first setback of the project.
It seems that overnight, part of the dirt on the east side of our hole had caved in and demolished our forming on that side. Thankfully we were able to get a backhoe in to clean out all the dirt and our great crew of volunteers were able to get things back the way they were supposed to just as the cement trucks arrived.
The pour went quite well and it wasn't long before it was all done.
A big thank you goes out to all the people who helped us pour our footing, they may not have all been professionals, but they all worked hard and made things happen and we are very thankful for all of them.
After the footing was done and the forming cleaned up, we decided it would be best to put all the gravel in and around the footing as well as install all the drain tile and sump pit. This way, if there would be a large rain we would be able to quickly pump out the basement and keep working.
At first we thought it was going to be a lot of work to move all that rock into the basement, but thanks to Erik and the generosity of his and Amber's Uncle Ray, he was able to borrow a small tractor with a loader that made things easier. (Even though it was still a lot of work.)
After the gravel work was done, it was time to start playing with Lego! Well, it might not have been Lego but it was similar in many ways. We used Logix styrofoam forms to build our basement walls. These forms consist of many pieces of styrofoam blocks that lock together and then you pour the cement into them. Them are easier and more fun to setup than normal forms and result in a better, more insulated basement.
It took us a few days to get the styrofoam all setup. It seems like it should be easy, just place one block over the other and don't line up your joints. But as soon as you have to put rebar in every level, build and reinforce window openings, setup bracing and scaffolding, it ends up taking a while.
Finally we were ready to pour. At 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday morning, the cement trucks arrived as well as a very large concrete pump. This pump makes pouring basements like this much safer and easier.
The pour went quite well, despite some tense moments. It was quite stressful, especially after the guy running the pumper told me that he poured a Logix basement the day before and they had 2 corners of the basement break open. We tried to go slow and not put too much pressure on the forms, and we were alert enough to catch any problem spots and fix them before they became disasters.
We almost got ourselves into trouble again with our falling dirt walls, it seemed that we parked the pumper too close to the edge of the basement hole and the pressure from the weight of the pumper was starting to cause dirt to fall against our walls. This could have caused us major problems if a large enough section of dirt caved in to damage our walls, but thankfully, we caught it in time and moved the pumper to a safer distance before anything bad happened. When it was all said and done, we had a nicely poured and pretty square basement to look proudly at.
A very big thank you goes out to Erik and my Dad, they have spent a lot of time helping me with the project so far and their time and efforts are very appreciated. Well, that's as far as we are right now, so consider yourselves up to date. We will try to keep this posted but it is hard to find the time when there is so much work to do.
- Shaun
My favorite part of the kitchen; the pantry and the fridge.
This little bundle of fur joined our household in August as I recall. She has been great, she is a sweet little cat. She readily became Zoe's playmate, which allowed us to be move from being Zoe's all day playmates to her caretakers. The change was amazing. The kittens first night was a little vicious, but by the next day they were getting along very well. They still chase each other around the house and they are very cute when the jump from high places to surprise the other cat. They snuggle each other a lot, here is a picture of the snuggling caught on camera.
Getting all glammed up for her wedding.
Here you can see the basement partially dug.
