Strong Foundations

Did you know we are building a house? We poured the foundation the week before Thanksgiving.

We had a pumper trailer come to help us maneuver the concrete. We had never seen a pumper trailer before, so didn't realize it was going to just be a hose rather than a boom. It was a very long, very heavy hose. Good thing we had a lot of people around! 

It was HEAVY. 

We are actually adding onto a shop Justin built five or six years ago for the people who owned the property before us. They never finished the shop, so we decided to just add to it. That made the foundation a bit trickier to do, but the clever guys figured it out! 

Evan and Justin filled the walls. Owen really did most of the work in handling the hose. I just stood around. 

We decided to go with insulated foam blocks for the foundation rather than forms or cement blocks. Basically they are two foam blocks connected with plastic webbing. You pour the cement in among the plastic webbing. The end result is concrete walls with foam insulation inside and out. Which seems to be a plus in northern New York.

Lily running around the outside of the basement. 

We decided to go with daylight windows rather than a door. Windows didn't involve digging down for nine feet, so that seemed better as Justin was digging in the soaking wet ground and getting the backhoe stuck. He generally can walk the backhoe out of anything, but it rained continuously for a week just before he was able to start digging, so things were pretty messy! 

We went around the walls twice so the foam would not beginning bowing. 

That up there is part of the shop that will eventually be part of the house. 

Watching and hoping the board wouldn't break. 

Filled walls

Evan smoothing off the excess

Evan was pretty great, coming up and helping Justin through our first snow day full of wet snow, get the blocks ready for pouring. 

Construction is a very messy business

Making it all smooth and perfect

Moving ladders around

A stellar picture of me and a smiling Justin!