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.