Did you ever have a project that seems like it would never end?  It seems like we have been working on our faux-foundation for a hundred years and only now is the end somewhat in sight.  We were able to dig a portion of the foundation with an excavator but half of the dig could only be done by hand.  The best part of course, is that the front half of the house was only 2-3 feet off of the ground…it makes for lots of head bumps and crouched-over digging…and poor Emily, she is old!

Some people assume that I do all of the heavy work while Emily sits by and buffs her nails and stuff.  Nope…not my girl!  Emily has muled (yup, that’s my verb) 80 pound bags of concrete and 45 concrete blocks every bit as much as I did.  She dug a large part of the footer which is the only reason we got it done.  Yes, that’s right, we got it dug!

I don’t like digging or working with concrete.  It is absolutely miserable work and I am absolutely thrilled that we were only temporarily employed as human backhoes!

The saga of our building a foundation after we built a house continues…in this latest episode, our heroes are positioned to build a wooden wall atop the block wall that they completed in our last episode.  Will they get splinters?  Will the Mrs. pummel the Mr. because of his stupidity?  Stay tuned viewers and find out!

Ok, so we built a wall on the back side of the building.  Of course, the idea is to eventually frame in all four sides with wooden framed walls on top of the block base.  We could have blocked the walls all of the way up but we both decided that we do not like lifting blocks any higher than we have to and that I am better and faster with wood.  We added a sill plate on top of the blocks and secured it with j-bolts embedded in concrete we used to fill in the holes in the blocks.  On top of that, we used treated 2x4s to build a traditional wall.  I made the fit tight for the wall boards so it will, in fact, provide a level of support to the entire structure as well.  The bulk of the weight of the building will remain on the posts and piers but the outer walls will have additional support.

Did you know that the outer walls carry the bulk of the weight of a building?  All of the weight of the roof (in our style building, anyhow), is evenly spread between the outer walls  opposite the gable ends?  I learned all sorts of stuff building this house, and, in particular, the way loads are carried and how to balance the weight of the house.  In reality, the house is not all that heavy.  Of course, you wouldn’t want to be under it if it fell, but spread out over its base, the pressure in a given area is not as bad as I expected when I first started ciphering on this place.  There are all sorts of calculations one needs to do related to live and dead loads, soil bearing capacity and component strengths when you build a house.  I had no idea but it’s pretty interesting to read and makes sense when you even realize these things are indeed things.

Anyhow, we finished the tallest of the “basement” walls and have blocks laid for half of each side wall.  We now need to dig additional footer space at the front of the building and the remaining halves of each side.  It should not be a terrible job but it will have to be done by hand as the excavator arm will not fit under the building in the remaining spots.

Our heroes have an interesting (not really) weekend ahead of them.  Stay tuned to our next episode…”Human backhoes”

I know, I have been posting way too much about the (slow) progress we have been making on the deluxe deer stand.  Sorry but that’s been a large part of what we have been doing lately.  So, we have been digging and concreting and cussing like mad to build a foundation under our already-built house.  Originally, we built the place on a post-and-pier foundation and that will remain the true foundation but we decided to add a traditional foundation (sort of) to give us some storage under the place and to cut the wind/cold in the winter.  So, we have been adding footers and new concrete block walls.  The first day of concrete, Emily and I mixed around 3200 pounds of concrete which I had to carry, bucket at a time, from the mixer (electric…thank goodness) to the footer form we dug/built.  We double handled the weight and that was a drag…

Those of you who know about foundations know that the footer is traditionally poured in one pour so there are no joints. That was not an option for us and since this isn’t a true foundation (except we are building it to spec aside from the joints), it should work for us.  We will have a few cold joints but they will be connected by rebar and buried well below the frost-line.

Emily’s grandfather, Emily and I set the corner last weekend.  The corner blocks have to be level/square/plumb and can be a pain the the hind-end.  So, it took us 5 hours to lay 5 blocks (also, see cussing mentioned above…there were a few missteps), but our corner is excellent!  Emily’s grandfather is 87 and worked every bit as hard as we did.  He slung block around and stood in the ditch all day helping us get things right…it was amazing!

This weekend, Emily and I went back and laid 50-some more blocks and got the bottom third of the footer above grade.  I have to tell you, if I had it to do over again, I would definitely build my foundation before the house.  I am still quite pleased with the post-and-pier foundation but traditional foundations should definitely be built where there is plenty of room to work!

Setting block is tough work and I cannot wait to have this part done.  It’s hard and I wish I had dishpan hands!  Concrete is hard on my delicate digits!  I’ll show some more details of how we plan to enclose this bottom part later but I promise to get off of this kick for a little while…bear with me?

Emily’s granddad gave me his words of wisdom on plumbing.  He said, “Always remember, hot is on the left and %#@* runs down hill.”  This weekend, we came a little closer to testing each of those rules.  Thus far, we have…uh…been becoming closer to mother-nature in a special way.

So, that gets old pretty quickly as you might guess and we are so ready for real plumbing.  The distance from the cabin to the septic tank is around 90 feet.  I dug about 60 or so feet by hand but I just didn’t have the heart to finish it and really, I wanted it to be 3 feet deep rather than 2.  A friend of mine took pity on me.  You see, said friend owns an excavator and generously volunteered to come out and help me dig a proper trench for the waste line.  We started around 7:30 and had it dug pretty quickly.  In fact, we had all of the pipe glued together and buried in place before lunch.  That’s even including the obligatory trip to the plumbing store to get missing parts.  PVC pipe is really great but not flexible so when you need a 22.5 degree elbow, a 45 degree elbow just won’t work.

Emily brought us some Taco Bell and my friend and I ate too many bean burritos and tacos.  After a quick lunch, we dug a second trench to install the clean water line from the cistern to the house.  The water pipe I bought is rated to 200 psi which is capable of being directly buried and all that, but I decided to bury it within a PVC conduit just to give another protective layer to the water pipe from which we will hopefully be drinking.  We kept digging (close to the house which was a little scary) and had another 3 foot trench dug and water line reburied by supper time.

There is still plenty of work to do, but we are much closer to testing whether we suitably followed both rules of plumbing.  I especially hope we got the second rule right!

Emily and I were talking about the deluxe deer stand the other day…we poured piers for the foundation, built the floor, set all of the walls and the loft and the roof…and all of that happened pretty quickly.  It seems like we have been putting siding on the building since before I hit puberty though.  How did we build the entire shell in what seems like less time that it is taking us to get the shell covered?!

I guess like everything, when the more detailed work gets going, things necessarily slow down.  We are taking our time installing the siding so the rain will hopefully remain outside.  Anyhow, we have finally finished siding 3 of the 4 walls.  We’ll finish the 4th wall when we get a deck built around that back side.  It’s just too high to do the peak until then.

We finally installed the final window last weekend as well.  How many executive deer stands do you know of that have nice big windows?  We still have one door to install (on the back where it is so high) to finish the outer shell.  I’ll tell you, windows are wonderful!  Emily and I looked across the hills and the windows make the deer stand just about perfect!

I know you are probably wondering about the waspers I talked about a few weeks ago.  They were not kind neighbors so I bought a brand new can of wasper spray at the Piggly Wiggly (not really…it was Kroger…PW  just sounds better).  I emptied the entire can shooting directly up into the “nest hole” where millions and millions of waspers poured out.  Of those millions, I think 7 died.  The spray can said the stuff killed for 24 hours.  We came back a week after spraying and the waspers were still all over their nest.  I know the can wouldn’t lie so my only explanation is that those bugs are seriously tough.  I am rethinking my relationship with the wasper family.  I think next week, we will take them a loaf of banana bread and a nice quiche.