Footings Poured and Starting Stem Walls

If any of you have the sudden urge to go into pouring concrete for a living, let me talk to you first. Whew! Pouring concrete is hard work! We poured our footings on Wednesday the 18th. Marty directed the spout from the truck, Joshua scooped with a shovel and made sure it went in evenly, and I followed behind and smoothed it out. It was tough work but worth the money saved, plus it feels soooo nice to have something besides trenches dug in the ground ;) 

Thursday night we started putting down clips and bending rebar for the next step in the foundation...stem walls. We have to build plywood forms on top the concrete footings, then we'll fill the forms with concrete and take the plywood down and reuse it as subfloor. Concrete for the stems is scheduled for this coming Thursday, we're hoping to take the forms off Friday night and get started on the pony walls on Saturday. 

Pony walls are wooden walls that are on top of the stems, then we can put the floor joists on the pony walls and then the subfloor! It is going to feel so good to nail down that subfloor and walk on it :) 

Jonathan came down Friday night and helped us out a little bit on Saturday, we squared the house out (it was 7 inches out of square...yipes!!) and marked the lines for the stem wall. Uncle Marty cleaned off the dirt piles that were in the middle of the house. It looks so much nicer all smoothed out :) 

Ok, I'll stop rambling and show you some pictures! :)

The first line of footings...

We had just enough extra concrete to make a little concrete pad for our porch steps come onto! It's going to look cute with potted plants on it :)

Concrete in the ground, woo-hoo!

Uncle Marty smoothing out the ground Saturday

Trying to figure out where exactly the house was out of square

Stem walls halfway up!

More pictures of finished stem walls after this weekend!! 

Until the next update, 

Joshua and Rebecca

Week 2 - More Footings...

Saturday, Sept. 14, 2013 

Since we didn't have to have the footings ready for concrete on Friday, we just finished them on Saturday. So, footings and piers are cleaned out, have both rows of rebar completed, water pipes in so we can have running water in the house [:)], cinder blocks and rebar ready to be wet-set in the concrete whenever it arrives. We also squared the corners off for when we start the subfloor and framing :) It was a pretty nice day to be working outside, and we had a good time working together :) Looking forward to hopefully more progress this coming week and weekend. 

Until next update...

Joshua and Rebecca

Waiting....

You know the old saying, "Hurry up and wait"? That is what we are doing right now :( Our town inspector quit his job about two months ago, and the town is still working on getting a new one. Being the impatient type I am, it has been quite the work to wait! There is an emergency town meeting this coming Tuesday - the 17th, that is supposed to resolve the inspector problem. If they do not have an inspector by then, or at least one ready by the end of the week, we will take pictures to prove we did things properly and just carry on. So here's to hoping a new inspector will be here by Tuesday evening and to hoping my patience will last that long...

[ ;) ]

Until next update...

Joshua and Rebecca

Some Progress...Week 1 of Officially Building

Even though we've had the property a while, we haven't been able to really work on it much due to a few things...one, we went on a two week vacation to Lima, Peru. It was a blast...but did set the house back a little, after all, it's kind of hard to build a house when you are in another country. :) Two...after we got back on Aug. 6th, our friend, Marty,who is helping us contract the house...went to Colorado for a couple weeks...so we were here, but our contractor and dirt work man was not. Third...when we were both back in the State, we all went to a camp in TX, it is really hard to build a house long distance, so now that we have figured that out we are here and concentrating on building! :) 

Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013 -

 We drew out the house one the ground (using flour! :), cleared out several trees and leveled part of the yard to be and where the house will be, drove in some stakes, and then Marty dug the footings with the excavator. 

Leveling and taking out trees

My handsome husband and Marty figuring out where to go next....

The first scoop!

After Marty dug the footings and piers, we had to clean out the footings by hand with a shovel, in case anyone is wondering - that is very hot and hard work, but it will be well worth it in the end!

Sunday, Sept. 5th, 2013

We finished cleaning out the footings and put in the first row of rebar

Concrete scheduled for Friday! :) 

Until next update....

Joshua and Rebecca

Property Pictures...

After owning the property for almost three months now, I am finally getting around to getting some pictures to show everyone! It is even mowed now, which makes it so much easier to envision a house and yard on it, as opposed to just a field of waving grass and some trees. We will build the house on a hill facing west, one of the things that made us really like this property is that we will have an awesome sunset view. I tried to take some pictures of a sunset, but as you can see my camera just couldn't quite capture it. Guess you will all just have to come visit to see it yourself! Until the next update....

Josh and Rebecca

This is facing east...the house will set right in the middle of the picture, I'm standing in our (very) sloped front "yard". 

Facing west...I can't wait to see that view out my front window! :)

Until next update....

Joshua and Rebecca

Moved Out....

On July 3rd, 2013, we moved out of this....

And into a 1979 travel trailer...which I had a picture of and can't find! 

Bummer, huh? We lived in the said trailer for only 2 months, before we were able to move into another house....

...a good friend bought this place to resell, and it still hasn't sold, so he offered it to us until it sells. Here's to it not selling until June 2014!! :) Just kidding, living in the travel trailer is not a piece of cake, but it isn't the worst thing either...it takes 30 minutes tops to clean, and has a very nice air conditioning unit for when it was super hot out, I would get so cold in the trailer that I had to turn the AC off! But it is nice to be able to stretch out a little. :) 

We are enjoying staying in a house...however temporary it may be :) 

Until the next update...

Joshua and Rebecca