Underneath It All

Wednesday, Day 8 of Construction, was our first day where rain was a probability. Early on, the weather plays a large role in timing of progress as everything is exposed. So as a result, Andrew has become our own little all-in-one weather-reporting system. He can report any published weather from any station to you on command for a minimum of the next month, probably next year if he searched hard enough. Not the same zip code? I'm sure he can do some sort of mathematical iteration.

Luckily, the weather has been amazing, and the crews have been able to forge on. With plumbing in place, the trenches were dug for the massive underground support beams. Because our house is 3 stories tall, we're having to put in 30" x 12" beams in strategic locations to handle the load. Once the trenches were done, the vapor barrier was placed over the soil, and tension cables were put in a grid like pattern for the post-tension slab. It has to be done exactly to spec, so let's hope they know what they're doing...

Day 8 - Getting in the trenches.

Day 9 - I hope you Gentlemen have done this before. Please read closely.

Day 10 - Voila! You have under-stuff ready for slab!

Our weekly meeting on Friday let us know that slab would be poured on Monday, mostly because they don't like to leave a slab over the weekend unattended when it's wet. Day 11, Monday afternoon and evening, the crews were hard at work pouring and scraping concrete. Hurray!

Day 11 - Doesn't concrete just make you want to go streaking? HAWT.

But whether it's poured on Friday or Monday, it doesn't really matter, because as we learned this morning, defacing is inevitable. Someone managed to write "AC/DC" on our future front porch while the concrete was wet. Seriously? You couldn't have picked a better band? I could have respected "Bob Dylan" or "The Beatles" or "Britney Spears."

Day 12 - Formless, firm concrete. I am standing on the porch. I think it needs a swing.

I'm still hoping framing starts this week, but I'm still not sure about the plans and curing times. Andrew swears that they could start tomorrow on the first floor but I'm leery. That is our next big step, and we're annoyingly excited. We'll get to "see" the space!