Demolition and Lumber

 

January 3 - Today Justin and Keif started with a little demo - they tore off the siding outside the playroom and the the living room.  At one point, the pictures on the wall of the playroom were shaking, so I took them down.  You can see our lovely rubbish insulation (at least there was some) poking out from a gap in the siding.  

The lumber also came today.  Exciting to think about what it will turn into.  

Evelyn did not like the noise when they drilled in the board (right).  She was telling them (through the glass), "Keep it down, okay?!"

The slab now has foam board and is all cleaned up.

Pouring the Concrete Slab

This morning Justin and Berne's brother Keif braved our icy yard and put down foam board and plastic sheeting in preparation for the concrete slab.  Alistair is home from school with a cold, so he was able to watch the cement mixer drive up onto our lawn and pour the slab.

Paul and his crew also patched the basement floor where they had busted out old cinder blocks that were underneath the oil tanks.

Concrete Footings

Today was another big day.  With so much happening, it's difficult to believe that this is only day two.  This morning they took some detailed measurements (through the open windows, which amused Evelyn) and built the forms for the concrete footings.  Berne used our old fence (that he had already repurposed to hold down the tarp) to create a safety fence of sorts.  Evelyn waited patiently for the cement mixer to come.

Evelyn loved watching the guys spray, shovel and smooth the concrete.  She thought it looked kind of gross when it first came out of the hose.  They guys put rebar in the finished concrete and then covered it up with blankets.

Digging Day

And so it begins.  By eight o'clock this morning at least five pick up trucks had descended on our front yard, and soon a large group of Carhart wearing workmen were banging away in our basement and digging outside.  The digging went fairly smoothly (it seems that the urban myth that our side yard was a gully filled in with soil from across the street might be true based on the sandy, relatively rock free soil).  The main issue was that our sewer pipe is exactly where the footing was supposed to be.  The decision was made to have the footing six inches above the pipe.

In the basement, the men built forms up against the brick foundation.  Because we only have a single layer of 150 year old brick holding up our house, the structural engineer recommended that the foundation wall be reinforced with concrete.  The new concrete slab will also be exerting a lateral force up against the wall.  While they are down there pouring concrete, we also asked that they create a small knee wall.  It turns out that our basement floor is four to six inches below the bottom of the boulder foundation.  They also demolished buried cinder blocks that held up the oil tanks we removed last year.

An Excavator Appears

Yesterday, the City of Lebanon issued our building permit, and today an excavator magically appeared in our front yard.  How I didn't hear it while I was wrapping presents, I'm not sure.

It's hard to believe that this is happening.  Time to finish emptying out the basement for some concrete work.

Building a Short Retaining Wall

There have been a lot of trucks in our neighborhood this week.  Most of the truck activity is related to the massive flooding and road damage we had on Tuesday afternoon.  There were three payloaders clearing mud and rocks on Tuesday, and there was a lot of truck activity on Saturday when they rebuilt the road at the top of our small hill.  We also have had trucks delivering material for our latest project.  We are building a small retaining wall at the back of our porch to raise the level of the ground.  We would like to have a more level slope (rather than one that slopes steeply towards the house).  Monday, we had some landscape timbers delivered, and on Saturday we had gravel delivered. (The same gravel truck brought gravel to our neighbors up the hill.  They had some significant part of the yard wash away.)

 

Yesterday and today, Colin installed most of the retaining wall.  It was hard work in all this heat and humidity.

New Roof

Today Mitch and his guys put the shingles up on the west side of the roof. It went really fast. The picture also shows the truck convention in our front yard. Brian was not here today, so his pick up truck is missing.

Goodbye Dumpster

Alistair loves trucks, so this whole project has been exciting for him. We are guaranteed at least one truck in our driveway a week Today we saw the dumpster being taken away. No more dumpster.

Trucks

We have had quite a few trucks stop by as part of our construction project. This truck delivered insulation and wood for the porch ceiling.

Pickup Truck and Tractor Excitement

Today our neighbor brought over his heavy duty pickup truck so we could load it up with our brush pile. Tom used the payloader on his tractor to push the pile closer to the truck. Alistair was fascinated.