All I want for Christmas is CONCRETE!

Timing is always something that has been an interesting part of this project so far.  Timing for things to happen on the property, timing for things to change in our personal lives, timing for finances to open up just when the call comes in that we need to add to the budget.  I know it's not a coincidence....

This week was another great scenario.  We got our Stem wall poured on Christmas Eve!  It very well was the most exciting gift I got this year (although the wrapped ones were all a close 2nd).

(this is a view of the house from the left corner of the house.  The garage is right out of site on the right side.)

Thankfully Seth's hard work saved us a lot of extra fees with the re-framing and pour of the concrete. We took a little jaunt over this weekend to check on everything, and it looks great!  It's funny how the concrete makes it feel small, in a strange way.  Luckily I was told to expect that.  I really felt that there was NO way our car would fit in the garage, but I'm sure it's fine.  And, if anyone knows the amount of things we have in our garage, I'm not expecting to drive the car in the garage right away, anyways!

Tearing down to build up

December 12th update: (I accidentally sent this one to draft, and managed to delete the pictures, so this is all you get!)

The last week has seen a few steps in the right direction, but we did have to take some giant steps back to take some baby steps forward.

First of, lets discuss double-dates.  I'm sure most of you would think it would be dinner and some kind of fun activity with friends.  Conversation, laughing...no kids.  Always a night to look forward to.  This week we had a double-date with my brother and his girlfriend.  It involved dim lighting and lots of laughing, but also head lamps, ice, rebar, 2x4's...and some impromptu ice skating.  Fun times.

In an effort to save costs on re-forming the foundation, we opted to tear down the existing forms ourselves.  We learned on Wednesday that our dirt guy was coming out to fix the compaction issues on Friday, which meant we had very little time to get everything ready.  And when that happens, you call in reinforcements.  So we left six kids, chicken nuggets, french fries and ice cream bars in the capable hands of Papa and the four of us went to work.  Surprisingly, it only took about 4 hours to pull up all the forms, and rebar and stack it neatly on the side of the property.  It think it would have went even faster if we weren't working on top of thick layers of ice from the freezing temps we had earlier in the week. There were a few falls and some impromptu skate moves, but we got it done!

So, with that done, we had our dirt guy come back out and fix everything and now it looks pretty and the Geologist thankfully agreed.  So, onward and upward we go.

Patience.  This is something I have never had much of.  I peeked at Christmas gifts when I was young, I always read the back of the book to know the ending...and Seth will probably a very embarrassing story about my lack of patience and the ultimatum I gave him before we were engaged. Yea, safe to say patience is NOT something that comes naturally to me.

Remember the Foundation

This month has been full of some ups and downs.  And I'm told this is the normal for the building process, so I'm just going to go with it.

The ups were when we got the forms placed for the foundation!  It was pretty exciting to be able to stand in a place and say 'this' will be our view from this room...'this' is what we will see when we open the door...things like that!  For a visual person like me, seeing the outline of the house really made it feel like a reality.

On the day of the pour for the footings for the concrete, we had the inspection and everything looked well and good....until he asked for the compaction report on all the rock we put under the foundation to fix the drainage issues.

Dum, dum...........DUM!!!!

For reasons I'm not going to dwell on, there was no compaction report done by our dirt guy.  So, we had to cancel the concrete and get the inspection done.  Which naturally meant more money and more time delays.  When the report came back it was noted that certain spots in the rock were not compacted as tightly as they would like-mainly around the edges- and there was more space between the forms and the rock than they would like to see.

What does that exactly mean?  It means that our dirt guy has to bring in more rock, re-compact certain areas and then bring in even MORE rock to elevate the edges of the dig out to be closer to the bottom of the forms.  Which means more money.  But, obviously, this can't be done without moving the forms that have ALREADY been laid for the foundation.  Which, again, means more money to re-place them once the rock is correct.

Add in some crazy cold temperatures so the ground is frozen and we have to wait until it thaws a bit and you have a scenario of 'two steps forward, TEN steps back'...and a very frustrated me.  I'm beginning to understand why we get those sympathetic looks when we tell people we are building a house!

But, with all the setbacks, I'm still trying to stay positive that there is a reason for it.  In fact, God has blessed us in many ways during this time, as if to say 'Remember, I GOT this!'.  So, I am trying to be diligent to remember OUR foundation and the blessings He has given us, especially in this season!  The baby steps forward on the house are still that...steps forward.  And even though it's not necessarily in the timeline we'd like to see, it's still a goal that will happen and this labor of love will be so worth it in the end!