Bits and Pieces

 We hoped that once the floors were done, the walls would quickly follow. We thought they were only waiting for the power to go in, as it's hard to use power tools with no power. The power went in last week, and on Monday this week I texted Troy for an update. Bad news. The trusses that were ordered in April, due for delivery in Sept, will not be here until the first week in Nov. ARGHHH! SO TIRED of stupid delays! 

Small task #1 completed this week was the planting of a few maple trees. We have many maples already in our woods, but they are yellow or orangey-red in the fall. We love the scarlet maples currently in our front yard, and maples readily sprout up all over the yard every spring, so we designated a few for transplant. They had been growing for a couple years so were decent size for transplanting. The white tubes seen below are "tree tubes". They act like mini greenhouses for the trees, giving faster growth to a taller height. They also protect from animal damage. Each tube is perforated down the side so when the tree gets too thick the tube will split and release itself.

Small task #2- Now that the dirt piles are gone from the hilltop and we have vehicle access to the campsite side of the hill, we mulched the path between the campsite and the bridge. 

Small task #3- Pulling buckthorn all summer means a huge pile of brush. There was a burning ban all summer due to the drought, but that has finally been lifted. Last Saturday we finally burned it all. Wanda and Bill, and Maggie, joined us for the evening, and the boys arrived later to keep watch until it cooled below the danger point. 

Small task #4- Arranged for Propane tank and filling. Tank will be delivered after the build reaches the point where it won't just be in the way. The price of propane is expected to rise considerably this winter (Thank you Joe Biden) and thankfully the company locked us in to the fall pre-order price of only $1.76/gal. With a 500gal tank, that will be plenty expensive! 

Small task #5- Sat down with the cabinet rep at Menard's and had my kitchen plan set up for order. They say orders of this line are only taking a week to come in, so they won't need to be ordered for a little while yet. I've been playing with the on-line planning program for a couple years and it's a royal BITB. I hoped that if I took it in to finalize it, that they would have a better functioning version in-house. They don't. We/she scrapped the whole thing and started over 3 times. I sat there for 2 hrs watching her play with it until we got it done. Below is the plan. The cabinet color is what I chose, but it shows darker floors and countertops than we will have. It also would not put in the correct shape of island top. The gap shown on the backside of the island will be where the trash, recycling, and step stool will go. The top will hide the gap, and also have an overhang for seating on the long side of the island. Most of the kitchen will be pull-outs, with only a couple actual doors on the lower cabinets. The cabinet on the far right that looks like it's facing the wrong way is intentional. The width of that tower is only 15 in, and I will never again deal with cabinets that are 24" deep and narrow width. They become a black hole of unusable space. Side doors here will be much more useful. The lower pic is the finishes. The bottom half is the cabinet finish. The top half is the current top 2 contenders for the floor for the whole house, and the chip is the current top choice for the formica countertops. 

 

Happy find- I love the old metal lawn chairs. They are comfortable, colorful, and last forever as long as you don't let them rust. They are also expensive. Even rusty ones in lousy condition can run $75 each. I happened across a Marketplace ad for a set of 3 for a total of $90. I'll give them a new paint job next spring. Color still undecided. 

 

A Casualty!

 Even a shock case can't prevent damage when it goes flying off the back of a vehicle going around a corner. 

My truck has a hard cover over the bed, which makes a nice make-shift table. Last week I wanted to take a look at the copy of plans the builder keeps on-site for the various subcontractors to use. He has lots of notes on them and I wanted to see what he had noted. I had them spread across the bed cover, and laid my phone down. Forgot to pick it up when I put the plans away. 

I was half-way home when I remembered I wanted to plug my phone in while driving and discovered it was not in the car. Shoot! Drove all the way back in hopes it had fallen off on-site. Nope. Slowly drove out, watching the sides of the driveway and road, stopping at every corner to get out and search the outsides of the curves. No luck. Finally drove home and confessed to Sid that I had lost my phone. 

We drove back out, so HE could look again.  Along the way Sid remembered he had a tracker app on his phone, so I put in my account info to track my phone. It claimed my phone was 8 miles south! That couldn't possibly be right, so we continued out to Bosky. Re-checked all the places I had already looked. When we had no luck, Sid agreed to follow the tracker, though he didn't believe it could possibly be right. 

The address it took us to was a rural address with a business on-site. We found an employee/owner and explained the situation. He asked where it was lost and he said he had not had any people up that way and it didn't make sense. Another employee approached and looked at the tracker, and walked around the parking lot looking in the truck windows. He asked Sid if  my phone would make noise and Sid tapped the button on the tracker that would make it do so. He could hear it ringing in one of the trucks! Pulled it out from where it was on the front seat. They found the employee who had been using that truck and asked where they found it. It was in the road at the LAST turn I had made before realizing it was missing. I had not looked as I drove back past that spot as I never considered the phone would have ridden *4* miles before falling off! Very nice people, and they invited us to their company and friends barn dance the next night, but we had other plans. 

Screen replacement: $240! Ouch! 

Floors!

And now we have floors! 

The plumbing rough-in was topped off with a layer of sand. Next up was plastic sheeting for a vapor barrier. Shown here with rebar laid on top to hold it in place.

Step 2 was a layer of 2in foam sheets for insulation. Don't want to lose our in-floor heat to the ground. 

The gaps shown here will be extra weight-bearing support for the stairs and second floor. When the concrete is poured it will create thicker pads in these spots for footings. 

Then comes the heat tubing. We'll have 2 heating zones: The open, vaulted rooms, and the closed rooms with normal ceilings. Also seen is the wiring (or at least the tubes for running the wiring) for the floor outlets in the great room (missing the box for the second outlet in this shot) and the kitchen island. Since there are no walls in close proximity, they had to go into the floor with the other end in a future wall. 

Yesterday- CONCRETE! Poured the floors for the interior of the buildings. LOTS of smoothing and polishing involved. The machine here is a ride-on, and has two spinning blades on the bottom to make it all smooth and level. The guy on his knees has metal "skis" under his lower legs and feet, and trowels under his hands. He slid around pretty easily getting all the areas around the pipes, where the machine couldn't get that close. 

Today- The interior floors got their cuts for later cracking. The idea is that when (not if) the concrete cracks, it will do so along those lines. Then the floors were poured for the outside areas- garages and porches. Different recipe of concrete mix, and a rougher finish. Also sloped slightly for drainage of rain and snow-melt. In the pic below they have a sheet of plastic spread over the floor so they can use the wheelbarrow to get concrete to the back porch. No pumper this time; they had to haul it into place the old-fashioned way. 

All done! They'll be back tomorrow to remove the framing. 

Now we just need walls to hang the TV on!

Updates:

1. The lovely driveway did NOT hold up entirely to the return of the cement trucks. But the parts that were still too soft are the parts we expected to not be driveway in the end. We'll work it all out. 

2. The bill for the driveway was exactly what the quote was. I wouldn't be surprised to find out he lost money on us. Or at least got less profit than expected.

3. Sid doubled my swing rope, then added a third loop that is loose so it won't wear through. If the main rope breaks, the extra loop should catch me.

Finished driveway (we hope!)

 While talking to the excavator's young employee/apprentice(?) one day, I commented that I had not imagined that the driveway would be such a process. His response- "Neither did we!" Apparently this was as much of a frustration for them as it was for us. At this point I'm really hoping that the contract we signed with them was an agreed-on final price, not an estimate. I'm sure there was much more gravel, sand and clay carted in, and time spent on moving it all around, than was initially estimated.

 After a summer of drought, the rain returned the week after we broke ground. When we finally got rain, the ruts made by the trucks filled with water that had nowhere to drain to. Unfortunately I didn't take any photos of the driveway at it's worst, but trust me, it was a mess! The clay holds water like a bowl; you can add more sand and gravel, but it stays loose and just squishes under any pressure. Rain every few days made it impossible for it to dry out enough to solidify. The last couple weeks have been dryer, and the rains lighter so it finally dried out and they brought in more sand and gravel. Yesterday they did the final grading and packing. Only one more day of heavy loads still ahead (the cement for the slabs) and then everything else will be much more driveway-friendly. 

After all the mess and stress and fuss, the end result is pretty nice!

As an indication of the amount of additional sand and gravel brought in, before the trucks did so much damage, the front edge of the tree patch straight ahead (below) was about a foot higher than the driveway. Now they are even. 

They packed in the driveway up against the house all the way across the front face, including areas where I expected I would put some flower beds. Given how much trouble they've had, I don't blame them for making it all as solid as possible, and this was a factor never discussed. I expect there will be raised beds in some of these areas in years to come. 

Minor mishap

This spring, Sid bought a hammock swing for me and hung it in our campsite downhill from the house. It has gotten a LOT of use as my favorite resting and relaxing spot. When Virginia brings the kids out, it's also Sami's favorite spot. Take note that it is hung from a tree, with a rope. 

The hanging of it is worthy of note. It's the only tree in close proximity that had any chance of being suitable for a swing. It took Sid many attempts to get the rope over the branch, which is about 20 feet up. The height gives it a lovely motion in use, and I can also feel the sway of the tree in the wind. 

However, swings on ropes on trees eventually wear through the rope. 

This was, without a doubt, the most sudden change of position I have ever experienced! One second I was enjoying my book, and next thing I knew I was on the ground! On the one hand, I was glad none of the workers on site witnessed my sudden fall from grace; on the other hand, it would have been nice to get a little attention out of the crash! Hard packed dirt is NOT a soft landing, and I lay still for a minute or so before moving. It took a moment to get oriented to what had happened and assess potential injury. 

A solid landing on one's tush results in a solid jolt all the way up the spine. By evening I was feeling it all the way up in my neck, and to a lesser degree in the middle of my back. Also a very tender seat. Before bed I took a moment to hang on the pull-up bar, thinking my own body weight might decompress my spine. I immediately felt multiple vertebrae pop as it stretched out. 

The following day I was scheduled to babysit the grandkids all day and evening. A little soreness and less tolerance for playing on the floor, but not too bad. I did call and make an appointment with the chiropractor for the the next day. And hung from the bar again, with more back-popping as a result. 

At the chiro, he adjusted my back, neck and hips. The neck definitely was out of whack and popped loudly when adjusted. By the time I got home it was feeling noticeably better. I told him I had been hanging from the bar and he said I probably saved myself from a week of back pain. Heat to be applied when possible for a few days and a follow-up next week. 

Sid got my swing re-hung while I was at Virginia's babysitting, and while I trust him, I'm not so sure I trust the rope! I had some trepidation while sitting in it today.  

Plumbing rough-in

 With the house back-filled, the next step was the rough-in of the plumbing. The plumbing company is a 3rd generation family business, with the 4th generation in training. Very nice young men. Obviously a family that believes in bringing the kids up right. 

The nice flat sand-covered-with-gravel bed of the house was dug up, stirred up and trenched to place the sewer pipes. All the wall positions were marked out on the sides of the foundations to provide the measurement reference points, and all the stacks, water "pipes"- actually hoses - laid out to the main connection point for each room needing water. 

A few days later, after the excavators came back to finish backfilling the workshop, the piping was covered with another layer of sand and all was tamped down nice and flat and smooth. 

Backfilling

These pictures from Sept 16th. 

Oh, no! There's a bobcat in my house!

With the forms removed, the trenches had to be backfilled and packed. Use was made of the piles of clay around the site, and loads of sand brought in and dumped into the interior. Three machines on the site for this day, and this was a rare sighting of all three in close proximity. They do a pretty complicated, well-choreographed dance around the site as they all do what needs doing without getting in each other's way. 

This tool is a mini-roller for packing the dirt into the trenches. The tractor drove in close to the house and the articulated arm is flexible enough to be positioned into the trenches and rolled back and forth. 

 Many loads of sand and gravel were brought in, but with the driveway still unstable, there was also a lot of scurrying around by the bobcat trying to keep up with smoothing out the ruts. At one point, the dump truck got too far over near the edge of the driveway and sunk into the softer dirt up to his axles. 

His load had to be dumped there to lighten him up, and the excavator came to the rescue. Must not be too uncommon of an event as the truck has a tow-strap handy, and a massive hitch point on the front bumper to attach it to. That's the biggest tow strap I've ever seen!

By the end of the day the house was backfilled and smoothed, but the shop was not. They also got a start on the final grading for the yard in general, and worked on distributing the extra clay out in the field where they've been staging equipment.