We Have Walls and Snow...

Last week the concrete basement walls were poured and then the snow returned. I don't think we have to worry about our concrete setting too quickly in this kind of weather. It's pretty exciting to see the defined space even if it is still open to the snow. Next steps are to set the window wells, dig out for the floor, get the plumbing roughed in, and backfill against the walls.

Concrete Forms Getting Placed

I'm continually surprised as to how long construction takes. You see a shopping mall go up in what seems like a week, but I guess it would feel differently if you lived there. We are a month into the construction of this addition and we now have foundation footings. The silver lining here is that the longer it takes the more time we have to save some extra money to actually insulate the box we're going to be left with! Over the last two days we have had a crew out placing the basement wall forms, and today the first ones have been set. It looks like all the materials are here to set the rest of them so we may be ready to pour in the next couple of days.

Still Digging...

We're currently in the phase of construction that you see people doing stuff, but it just all still just kinda looks the same. We now have most of our footings dug and I hear that those will be poured in this week. Although with the holiday who knows. We do have a re-routed sewer line that required removing about 5' x 5' chunk of driveway, but that could have been a lot worse. I hadn't really thought about our sprinklers through this process, but that is going to be a lot of work to re-run all the lines that have been demolished during the digging. We still have a ton of dirt in the yard but most of it will be used to backfill the concrete forms. So it boils down to...we still have a mess.

The Little Man...

So Beau got all dressed for church today and I couldn't help but throw this up. Check out our little man. He is getting so big so fast and is just about two months shy of 2 years old. Time is going by so fast. It puts a 15 year mortgage into perspective I guess.

Excavation Continues

So it shows what I know. I dug all morning on Saturday and thought I had found the sewer line. Come to find out, it was in the second most likely place and runs underneath our driveway. Our excavator found it and was able to connect up a temporary line for us. What a day a difference makes as they then continued to work over the weekend and we are now just a half a day on Monday away from being fully excavated. The sewer is going to have to be re-run so that means tearing up more of our driveway. It's less-than ideal but it could have been a lot worse.

No More Cement

Marta and I went down to the BYU football game last night. A 55-7 win over Wyoming. It was a lot of fun even in the 30 degree weather, and BYU might sneak into the top 20 in college football next week. When we came home I saw the above scene. No more cement, just dirt. We had all of our cement removed in a day and now we're ready to dig a new foundation and basement, which is supposed to begin tomorrow.

Halloween

Beau caught on to Halloween pretty quickly. At the zoo he is always very excited to see the elephants so he was pretty excited to dress up as one. He and Marta came out to my work and trick or treated in the cubicles and then we hit the ward Trunk or Treat to play some games. It took a while for him to get used to the chunky feet and hood, but as long as there was candy involved he suffered through it. Marta did a great job on his costume and got a lot of compliments on it.

Ground Breaking

So today is finally the real ground breaking day. As we began this process of re-building the addition to our house we knew that we would be battling the elements this late in the year. But this past week as we have been waiting for permits the weater has been beautiful. So of course today is rainy and very cold. Today we have a crew that is taking out our old concrete patio, block retaining wall, and stairs to the basement. Last week we also had to remove our huge tree from the backyard. Apparently it was a junk tree that grew in just a few years, but it was lifting our driveway and would have damaged our new foundation if we would have left it. We'll have to find a new home for Beau's swing. The sound of jackhammers is exciting...and the current plan is to be digging the basement tomorrow.

Demolition Time

Mom and Elmer were out a couple of weeks ago just in time for our demolition work. What great timing they had! They were a great help to us as we filled two roofing dumpsters with debris. You should have seen Elmer go with the crowbar, but his back muscles had to remind him that he was a CPA and not a roofer by profession. So we took off the back of our house, sealed off the ductwork, and removed the plumbing.

The Construction Zone

So I figured it would be fun to show the progress of the construction of our new addition. It's kind of a long story how we got here. There was always a springy floor in the laundry room. It was a problem when the washing machine filled up with water and got really heavy and then would bounce on the floor. It sounded like a helicopter landing on the roof every time we did a load of laundry, but Beau did like the ride! So being the handy guy that I am I figured I would fix it one Saturday. I pulled up the carpet and removed the piece of subfloor needing to be replaced. I knew I was in trouble when the whole floor joist fell. Taking a better look, we could now see that our addition (about 12x26) was built with no foundation. From here we went back and forth for a few months about what we should do with the space. Could we save it? Is it worth saving (there was no insulation in walls we later found)? What do we build and how much could we do ourselves?

The final winning plan involved a tear down and then a bigger rebuild (27x17). This also means that we would have to demolish our screened in porch that we built last summer and really enjoyed, but all good things require sacrifices. So from here, I will chronicle our building adventures...

And Then There Was the Blog...

So after hearing so much about the Blog and catching up with the NY Grandons on their grandonfanclub blog I have decided to start one for us. So here you will find what's going on with the Utah Grandons.