Basement slab, walls and the incredible flying dogs

A lot has happened in a very short amount of time! We have a first floor with two walls, a basement, plumbing in the basement, and a lot more dirt around the basement walls (care of the Erika and Mark wheelbarrow team).

On Monday night, we took the dogs to the site and let them play on the platform. They loved tearing around and leaping over a partially constructed wall.


















The following photos are in chronological order working your way down.


Pre-slab plumbing and radiant in the basement



the framing crew - Jed, Dan and Tom



We've got a basement!


North wall





North and East walls - taken about 2 hours ago!

Walls!!!!

Well, we're going to have (basement) walls in about a day - just as soon as that concrete cures. Tomorrow the wall frames come down to reveal the concrete within, which is being poured today.

Our foundation guy Curt Wilson is awesome! His crew is fast and great, and he's talked Mark through every step of the way. Confidence is restored that we can be finished in 2010!!!


Showed up at 8:10am with a book, expecting to wait a while for the show to begin - this is what I saw instead. Holy cool!


















overhead view of concrete pour from our neighbor's second floor

Joe the concrete dude

Demo/Excavation photos

I've been negligent in getting photos on the blog. Although my parents saw the work site last week, our family in Iowa has been clamoring for photos and we have yet to deliver.

But first, an update on the status of the project. The house was demolished on May 19. It came down amazingly fast - when we showed up at 10am, we had a house and when we got home from work at 6om, we had a big pile of rubble. Seriously.

As you can see from the pictures above, Mark and I took a stab a the demo ourselves, which proved both slow and painful (I hit my ankle with the sledghammer when trying to swing it toward the wall!).




Back to May 19 - the remainder of the week included dozens of trips to and from the dump/recycling center to offload the housing materials and foundation. Despite a few setbacks - the big purple excavator, dubbed "Barney", went kaput on day 3 of the project - progress was made, albeit slower than expected.

By last week, excavation efforts were underway. Because the property's soil is primarily sand (we dug our fence's post holes with a shop vac, if that gives you an idea of how sandy it is!), it proved more difficult than expected. So... there is a theme here. Everything takes longer than expected!

Our concrete guy came yesterday and is, as I write, busily working to build the structure for the foundation. Sides poured next week, basement slab the following week, hopefully.

More soon!

Demo day is here at last!

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Demo day is tomorrow, bright and early (as early as 7am). Prep work only today because the tractor wasn't fixed in time to start today.

UPDATE: Demo guy's tractor broke down and will hopefully be fixed by noon. Maybe demo today, maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow is demo day! We're thinking sometime between 9 and 11am tomorrow. Seattle friends and neighbors - come on out for the show! We'll post pictures galore once it's finished.

The teeny apartment

Our little place doesn't require more than 4 photos to capture its entire square footage, but it's cozy and convenient.

Interior House Photos

house photos after digging up trees

Front of house
We still have the magnolia, but can't replant it until it blooms. Any day now!



A large hole where the japanese maple used to be. Man, that was work!



Back yard - straight back are the two japanese maples; the plant on the right near the orange mesh fence is the forest pansy from the parking strip. The chubby butt in the middle is Oscar.



Back of house
Mark ripped off the crappy vinyl panels to see what was beneath. Crappy wood paneling.