Blue Skies!

70 mph winds and flood warnings, but all we can see when we look out the window are bright island skies! Loud, flapping, plastic skies :)

This was exactly the weather I was scared of, but these guys are going out of their way to make it as painless as possible for us.. The house is sitting on a foundation, and it's all backfilled in, so the ground around the house is solid. Every opening is covered with a tarp, so the only place water is getting in now is through the gap between the sill plate and the first piece of siding.

<--They're getting out the last of the forms here, and getting ready to spread gravel inside.




All the foundation drainage is in place, and we have all the downspouts tied into it as well, but the sump pump wasn't supposed to go in until after the slab was poured. The rain is predicted to be pretty constant for a few days, so they managed to get the pit in place and the pump working before the storm hit. And boy is it working!

The slab still needs to poured under it, and the outlet still needs to be laid but this is a pretty good test of the system. The water is just shooting out a pvc pipe next to the front stairs for now..

.. which brings me to the very exciting detail..


..WE HAVE FRONT STAIRS!!!

They were only visible for a few minutes before everything got battened down, but look how nice!!! Jeff primed them before the rain, so they'll be ready for us to finish once this work is done. (We thought we were going to be building them ourselves at the end of the month, so I'm extra-excited that they're already there!)

And.. do you notice anything else about this picture? There's a newspaper on the stairs!! They've only been there for 5 minutes and there's already a newspaper on them!! (I may be exaggerating slightly, but I was used to the morning game of hide-and-seek at our old place to find the newspaper under the car, or sticking out of a slightly-worse-for-wear plant.. one more reason I LOVE ALAMEDA!)





Here's the underside of the stairs.. I can't wait to walk on them! They look very nice and sturdy, don't they?!


The sump pit is just to left of here.. So we still have a little room under the stairs that we can use for storage. We have much more living space here than our old house, but a net loss of storage. And we have to find somewhere to keep all those Halloween decorations!








Getting back inside..


<-- This is the view in the garage after the cribbing came out. It didn't stay like this for long. There was more dirt excavated to bring everything down to the correct, even level.


Then a pile of clean crushed gravel was poured for drainage.



A thin vapor barrier was put down on top of the gravel, then a layer of sand was spread on top of that.







And then, because we're going to put radiant heat in the slab, a layer of 2" foam insulation was put down.


(We'll post some details about the radiant heat.. we went back and forth on whether to do it, then decided we'd be silly to not take this opportunity to put it in since once the slab is poured it'll be much more work and money to put it in later.)




And then, on top of the insulation, the Bituthene goes down (it looks sort of like whitish asphalt in these pictures.. it's a thicker than I expected)


And then finally, the rebar goes on top! The spacers hold the rebar in place so they wind up in the center of the slab.


We'll be tying the tubing for the radiant heat onto the rebar.. so we'll be holding things up for about a week. Otherwise, they'd be ready to pour the slab now.


Here are some other odds and ends around..

This is the rough plumbing for our new bathroom.. Turns out venting wasn't part of the plumber's price quote, so that's costing more than we thought..

And no, that's not structural mustard.. it's chalk they used to mark the position of the rebar.






Here's that beefy beam I was telling you about in the main workshop area. This guy is holding up the whole front part of the house, so we only have that post in the space and not a whole wall! It's very exciting.


And there's plenty of room above the beam to run all our wires and plumbing and what-not, so we won't need to notch the joists for anything.





And here is the final framing in the garage! It looks just like a garage, doesn't it?!




Next up is the radiant heat.. and waiting out the storm

Another Crazy Idea-Sunken Concrete Patio!

Turning Lemons into Lemonade in Grand Style!!

One of the things we didn't count on when doing this project was just how much the lot slopes from back to front. At the front the new slab will only be about a foot underground, while here in the back as the picture shows it's more like 3'!!! Yikes, we can't have our new door opening into a 3' tall dirt wall can we?
Here's what it looks like from inside the back room looking out into the back yard. We knew the back door was going to be below grade, just not this much. In the original contract with the concrete company they are going to excavate back 20', even with the sides of the house and re-pour the deck post footings so they will be at grade. We were thinking maybe 2' high walls....well, in the back they are going to be more like 3.5' walls!!! Yikes!!! Walls that tall are going to require a retaining wall.. we can't just have them make the cut and go away and get to it later - the walls will collapse and make a mess.

Here's what we've come up with! A big gorgeous sunken patio that Irene is calling our sunken living room. It'll have a stamped concrete floor (with drainage) to look like flagstones. We were not sure about how the stamped concrete would look but we saw an example on a house and it looked fine. We will use concrete stains to make it look like real stone. Along three sides of the patio we will have concrete benches. We would like some way to texture the benches so they don't look like concrete, but we don't know if they can be stamped like the patio? In the upper south-east corner we are going to plumb in a gas line for a fire pit that folks can sit around when it gets cold out. We also left space for a BBQ (which will also be plumbed with nat gas-yeah no more tanks to change!!)

Here's what the cross-section of the bench-retaining wall will look like. The seat is sloped for drainage, and the back and knee section will be sloped for comfort.
Here's the brilliant thing - the benches can be viewed as a two tier retaining wall (of odd shape for sure) that won't require permits!! Or a hand rail along the outside of the patio! The patio does not require permits either so we can do the whole thing without the city getting involved!!! Yahoo!!!! No paperwork, no fees!!!! and we'll have a super cool outdoor entertaining area for our most favorite BBQ parties!
So, what do y'all think? Great idea? Crazy idea?

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!

and she's down!

Day 14 and our house has a foundation!

This is Dean who was, in fact, a nice guy.. but I think Shadow there was running the show.

Everyone showed up nice and early, did some last checks, and pumped the water and scooped the mud up out of the forms while the concrete mixer truck backed up at about 1mph for a block.


Then they hooked everything up and started pumping it in!




















This is the fleet of trucks on our street. That's the second concrete truck rolling in at 9am! There was a LOT of concrete was brought in here today.




They hand formed it up to the sill and smoothed it out.


<-- This area is still being formed

While the driveway walls are niiice and smooooth. Look how pretty! -->

We have 10.25' between the walls so getting the bikes out with a car parked there should be no problem!

And look how nicely the ends slope down toward the sidewalk. This way there won't be anything to trip on because it's totally level with the sidewalk for about a foot, then starts sloping up as a retaining wall.

We snuck downstairs tonight and made it official.. It's really our house!!

One more day till our house has feet

The rain is supposed to be over until the end of next week, so our little lean-to tent has gone away. Over on the East side of the house you can see that everything is pretty much ready to be filled with concrete.

The inspector was by yesterday, and he liked everything he saw. He needs to come again before the pour to inspect the plumbing and the final forms, but it seems like we're good to go for getting a foundation tomorrow!


Here's a nice illustration of how fast these guys are working. This is where the gas line comes into the house. On the left is after day 11, on the right is the next day. Once the outside piece of plywood goes up it's hard to see the rebar inside




















And here's the footing for the post which will hold up the beam which will hold up the whole middle of the house. On the left is after day 11, on the right is the next day with the post in place




















And a better view into the footing. The slab will be poured over the top, so we won't even know it's there.
















These are the sleeves for the plumbing lines into our new bathroom. The plumber had more to do today, which is one of the reasons the pour was delayed.

From this angle outside you can see most of the final structure of the forms, and all the bracing so the concrete can't push out.

This is our growing river, also known as the foundation for our load-bearing wall in the back of the house.

And finally, a view from the back. There's quite a lot going on down there.

Hopefully everything goes well tomorrow and we'll have something for the house to sit on!

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow can stop these guys

This is where we are at after only 10 working days!

This week has been full of rain, and it hasn't slowed the crew down one bit! Though the bottom of the footing trenches are getting kinda muddy...


<-- This is the form for the foundation wall on the West side of the house.

Notice that the foundation wall will be flush with the inside side of the joists. The grey sheet is the waterproofing membrane which lines the trench below ground level. You also can see the rebar which reinforces the concrete (it's right there in the name: reinforcing bar.. rebar.. get it?), and the anchor bolts which tie the house into the foundation.

That's the last picture taken before the rain hit..




This is what our back door looks like now. The waterfall off the corner is nice.








This will be the bearing wall in the back part of the house. The front workshop area will have a super-beefy post and beam to span the house and keep it nice and open.

The 2x6s here aren't the joists, they're just there to hold the sill plate up until the footing is poured. The foundation will be poured up to the bottom of these bottom plates then the slab will be poured giving us one level unbroken floor.

There's a nice river running through these trenches, but they'll bring a sump on Thursday to pump it out before pouring the concrete.






The front of the house is a slightly different obstacle course every day. The sidewalk is broken up for access to the sewer, and the intact part is of course taken up by the porta-potty. The nice 96 year old lady has been walking in the street on her way to visit her daughter.. I'd really like for her to be able to use the sidewalk again soon.

You may notice that one of the garage doors is missing.. it apparently came apart from the vibrations.

We haven't heard anything about the inspection yet, so I hope no news is good news. We'll find out in the morning..
We hope that everything goes as planned and they can pour the foundation walls this Thursday.

the wait is finally over: first problem

What You Don't Want To See When Preparing To Pour A Driveway

A couple of things came up yesterday as the driveway was being dug down... because we lowered the level of the garage, the driveway has to slope down about 2 feet from the street-this extra depth uncovered a few surprises...

<-- Here you can see both the problems. At the bottom left is the main sewer lateral cutting diagonally through the driveway. The trenches are at the final depth, and the pipe was barely below the surface. The yellow hose on the right is the main gas line into the house, also very close to the surface and nowhere near where anyone thought it was: right in the middle of a footing.

In this picture you can see why we were surprised to find the gas line in the middle of the driveway ->>

The red circle at the upper left is the line into the gas meter.

The blue circle is apparently the original gas line, right where we expected to find it, but capped off and not connected to anything.

Yellow on the right is the active gas line, about a foot into the driveway.

George the GC (in the Raiders jacket-go Raiders!!!) came over and we spent some time measuring and talking about the problems.


The sewer line will definitely need to be moved, but that was less of a surprise. It'll run along the side of driveway under the water main (Apparently the sewer line can be as close as a foot away from the water line), but then it needs to make about a 60 degree bend (this seems like a likely clog point) to meet up with the city line.

Also, because of the new lower floor level and the fall requirement the fixtures in the bathroom will be higher than the floor.. we're just trying to determine how high.

Here's Hector (the head of the crew) measuring the height of the stack and where it connects to the city line, which is the absolute lowest it could be connected.

The gas line is a different issue.. from what everyone tells us it's very unlikely we'll be able to move it. All we need is a few inches to get it out of the driveway, but that would likely add weeks and a few thousand dollars to the project.

We are going to have to alter the retaining wall on the side of the driveway to skirt the gas line. This is going to squeeze the width of the driveway somewhat. To determine what the absolute minimum the driveway width can be, we pulled up my bike next to the car and got to measuring ourselves.. all we need is to be able to have a car parked in the driveway with enough room left over to get a motorcycle into and out of the garage. Dan's bike is a little wider than mine, but we think if the narrowest part of the driveway is 10' (and the car is parked as far to one side as we can manage) we should be ok.

I've got piles of pictures of the footing forms and framing thus far, I'll get that up tomorrow.