Stay in touch with our latest adventures on the new Sawtooth Powder Blog

27 May 2010

The biggest debacle so far...Lumber

We thought we just had shell out a large sum of money and lumber would automatically appear on our property in conveniently placed locations. Wrong.

The delivery truck arrived yesterday with a forklift designed to be used in warehouse. With racing slicks for tires, the forklift couldn't even get in our driveway before the tires spun out - despite the dry conditions. So we were resolved to placing the materials on the main road at the entrance to our driveway. On the second load, the forklift got stuck in the pea gravel on the road, which resulted in lots of cursing on the part of the delivery guy. We pulled the forklift out with the truck, and he unloaded the rest down the road, well over 200' from our driveway and much more than that from the house. Arggh.

With lumber spread all over the neighborhood, what to do? We called our friendly excavator to come bail us out. In pouring rain, we slung the wood bundles and packed them into our property, turning our driveway into a muddy quagmire in the process. We succeeded in moving the materials without breaking anything or having a heart attack. It's stressful to see several thousand dollars dangling off-balance on the end of strap.

We're headed to Minnesota for 5 days, and good timing. Not much is going to happen until the drivway dries out. We're still on schedule - the framing will begin mid-June, and we just have to get the slab poured before then.



The goods.


Pulling the wimpy forklift out of the gravel. There's hardly a paved driveway in a 50 mile radius and they send this thing?


Jay to the rescue. Lots of $$$ dangling in mid air.


Alls well that ends well.

Feeling Drained

With 100' of perforated pipe and a truckload of gravel, we installed the footer drain around the basement a few days ago. Lots of manual labor moving gravel, but much more satisfying than the work we did the few days afterward...




\



24 May 2010

Slab plumbing

About as exciting as it sounds, but needed to be done. Had drains for a future basement bathroom installed, as well as a floor drain for the utility room.

Also ordered the lumber materials for the house today, should arrive midweek. Right now the weather is our main enemy, consistent small bouts of snow have left the lot a muddy mess. Whether we get the basement slab poured this week will depend heavily on mother nature.

21 May 2010

More power to us...

In a case of cosmic alignment, the stars were in our favor today when somehow the electrician, the power company, and the excavator all showed up and no one got in each other's way. By early afternoon, the concrete walls were infilled with gravel for the slab, power had been run to the house, and the meter base was hooked up along with a couple of outlets for the construction.



The makings of something.



In the trenches.



Finished meter main and outlets.



The last time we'll see this.

19 May 2010

Check out the concrete...

Stripped about half the forms today to reveal our new basement walls! The excavator will start infilling with gravel tomorrow.

17 May 2010

Basement Walls Poured!

A milestone in the construction process ... basement walls! Despite a near cancellation due to truck breakdowns, the pump and concrete trucks arrived this morning and made short work of filling the wall forms. The forms will get stripped on Wednesday, and then we will get to work placing gravel and plumbing for the basement slab.

Finished formwork prior to concrete.

Pump truck slinging mud.



Watering the trees with a 120 foot boom.

13 May 2010

Wall Forms

The walls are partially formed and will be finished tomorrow. Crossing our fingers that the walls get poured on Monday...


10 May 2010

Footers = Done

After waiting for the lot to dry out enough to drive a concrete truck on (see photo from last post), we finally got the footers poured this morning. Which is a lucky thing with more snow and rain in the forecast today. Hopefully the basement walls will get formed while the lot dries out from the next round of precip, and maybe we'll get those poured as early as Friday.



05 May 2010

Footers

Jay of Feris Excavation and Ross of RW Concrete braved the weather to finish the hole and lay the footer forms today. Weather permitting, they should get poured tomorrow.

04 May 2010

Ground Breaking

So it begins! The excavator arrived yesterday and went to work today. We now have a hole and "Mount Lundy"! The excavation went faster than we thought, and he should finish tomorrow after meeting with the concrete contractor. Hopefully the basement foundation will start going in this week or early next week. Currently we're racking our brain trying to figure out the best approach for waterproofing and insulating the basement. A very controversial topic!


Before


After, from the same spot and 6 hours later...


The hole, the machine, the boulder garden, and Mount Lundy