I Like Big Backsides to My House

This week, the basement slab was poured, some plumbing work done related to it, and the foundations for the brick walls on the sides laid. Here are some pictures my contractor sent me on Friday morning. The trench for the brick wall foundation on the west side Brick wall foundation on the west side. The CMU is under that wood board. Freshly poured concrete slab. Foundation wall for the brick wall on the east side. I took some more pictures this morning. Here's the basement slab looking from the existing dining room. You'll notice a sump pit there in the middle....Change order #2...we thought that we could just connect into existing foundation drains but alas there weren't any there. We also never had a sump but because we had very little earth next to our house, we never had the need before. Definitely worth the cost now to prevent any damage. Because we have overhead electricity and we know that our block is the last to get power back in the neighbor...

The past week the contractor has been busy pouring concrete. Last week I shared the formwork, but this week, there's more! A week ago Thursday, we had a crazy rainstorm, so Friday morning, there was a foot of water in the hole. It didn't rain that much but I think that our whole roof and our neighbor's drained into the hole. Took the contractor a couple of hours to pump it out. This is what was under all that water, a concrete footer! Hooray! A closer in shot of the footer  By Wednesday, we had concrete foundation walls! Next week, they finish the concrete and then continue work on the addition. In the next couple of weeks we should have brick walls.  We are about a month in, received our first pay request, and things appear to be on schedule. It will go a lot faster once the concrete is completely done.

I have been swamped with life in general so I apologize for my lack of blogging. This is a good one, though, as the excavation is well under way in our backyard. Excavation started about a week ago. Here's where it was on Saturday. They worked Saturday to help catch up due to the weather delay. The plaster ceiling in the dining room and kitchen has also been removed. The wood framing of the second floor is in really good condition and has a surprisingly few number of holes. It's really nice wood. The duct that used to feed the kids' rooms. This one will be closed up, as we are now feeding their room from the addition, coming in under the windows. The main house return duct. We are going to re-route this one into the wall so that we can keep a nice, square space for the kitchen. By Monday, the hole was even bigger! They started pouring concrete yesterday but I had evening engagements both last night and today, so I wasn...