Foundation, Day 22

It's a new year, with a new foundation! Let's change things up and start at the back of the house today..

The back stairs are holding up pretty well. The concrete bottom step is long gone, so we have a nice ramp up to the stairs. And you can see the sheathing on the back wall that goes all the way from one side of the house to the other! The posts under the deck will need to be redone after the ground is excavated down to the level of the door.

You can also see the ABS drain line from our kitchen sink tacked up outside the wall. It's temporary, and much better than the bucket we found under the open pipe last week.


This is the back door from the inside. You can see the new studs and outside sheathing. All the bearing walls are being sheathed on one side now, and left open on the other for easy access. After we've run all our wires and plumbing and insulation and everything else we'll close up the other side.

Here's a temporary beam in the garage held up by a temporary post. When we first got the house there were a couple of posts holding a beam up in more or less the same spot.. when this is done we'll be able to pull an actual car into the garage!

Here's from the front of the house looking back. The post up close is holding up the other end of the beam in the garage.

The post further back is holding up the super-beefy 6"x10" beam that's holding up the middle of the house.. I'll have to get a better pic of that beam, it doesn't look sufficiently impressive here.

In back you can see the bearing wall with its plywood sheathing. The door in that wall leads to a hallway, at the end of which is the back door.

Check out our new front stairs!

You can see the stringers installed on the side, with a nice flashing detail which should keep these stairs in good shape for a long, long time.

Underneath the front stairs is the pit where the sump pump will be installed. We're a little worried at how full it already is of water.. If it's lower than the level of the groundwater it'll never stop pumping.

We were originally hoping to use that area for storage, but a sump pump that's out of the way and easily accessible is pretty good too.

We're so glad we got to make some actual progress in 2007, and 2008 is when all the manual labor starts.. happy new year!