Gary’s post: As you can see from the picture, the foundation is being framed in for the concrete pour. This part of the house building is particularly important because it is literally the foundation for the house. From here, the plumbers will be in tomorrow to start their work on the rough in plumbing. That’s putting in all the pipes that come through the concrete into the correct locations for toilets, bathtubs, sinks, showers…. you get the picture. And we have a couple of electrical outlets that will need conduits in the foundation for floor outlets. After the plumbers, the foundation contactor lays insulation on the dirt pad, then 6″ of crushed gravel compacted and then he pours the concrete. We’re doing 3,000 psi concrete for the house and 4,000 psi concrete for the garage. The rating is the pounds per square inch the concrete can support before crumbling.
These guys worked through our 40mph sustained winds yesterday. Blew dirt everywhere and must have been miserable. I stayed in the trailer all day and worked. The windstorm was from a cold front that moved through here. Our temps went from 70/40 to 55/28 this morning. It’s supposed to snow this weekend, which is crazy because the trees, weeds and flowers are out from the warm weather. It’s not a bad thing though, it kills the flys and bugs that hatched last week.
You might have noticed the covered off-road vehicle in the above picture. That’s the Can-Am we bought for driving in the desert. Owning one of these is like going to a strip club. You keep throwing money at the stripper hoping for the ride of your life…
I do enjoy the Can-Am. It’s like a blank canvas. While the basic vehicle is awesome and fun to drive, I can add all sorts of stuff to make it look cool and drive even better. Like I said, you keep throwing money at it hoping for the ride of your life…. We’ve added turn signals and a horn to make it street drivable, when necessary. I’m going to add fenders to keep rocks from coming in the cabin and I’ve added a spare tire holder so that when we crush a tire, we can quickly change it out and head back to the trailer or house. The idea is to keep from getting stranded or seriously hurt. When I lived here last time, we had motocross bikes, so we did a lot of dirt riding. I still have some of the gear. I must say that I look ridiculous wearing a helmet at my current age.
Yes, that look of terror is real. Taking that thing off was painful. My ears were bruised for two days thanks to blood thinners and big ears. Needless to say, that helmet was returned for something a bit less brutal on my ears and more comfortable.
Back to the house. We finally settle on windows and doors. We wanted a multi-slide door for the living room to patio door. It was 4 panels, so it would slide into one panel leaving a three-panel opening. Well, that would have been an $16,000 door from Pella. While it is a damn cool door, it’s not $16,000 worth of cool. We’re staying with double opening sliders and keeping the costs reasonable. Pella windows and doors are part of the package we bought from our architect – so we’re locked into those product lines. We decided to go with fiberglass windows as they have a lifetime warranty, are triple paned, and oblivious to weather and temperature. Doors are from the reserve collection, which should work out well as we’re mixing collections and looks. Hoping to have those delivered sometime late April.
Enough for now. I wanted to catch up on where we are with the house construction. Things are getting very real, and I need to start watching the budget to make sure we cover our costs. With the dirt pad going over, we’ve come close to eating up our savings on the foundation. I have to update the house cost spreadsheet later this week.
Hoping everyone has a good evening and enjoyed “hump day”. Take care and more tomorrow.
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