We have about 20 yards of new concrete standing under and around our house. I can feel it, the density and mass, even though we still float about a foot and a half above it.

*We have to build some frame walls before we can set the house down, as half of the house still hovers about 15′ above the ground. (*By “we”, I mean “Morgan”.) The ICF walls don’t look especially different from the outside, so I’ve posted a photo of one of the regular retaining walls for under the shop extension instead.
Huck has been enlisted to do small jobs, cleaning the job site and sorting screws. He is really enjoying the trench-like feel of the catwalks and the gap between wall and house.

Morgan is right this minute attempting to fix the little excavator our contractor left us to use. Slightly busted.

And that’s the news!

This little guy is making a go of it in the remaining days of our wonderfully warm summer. Neither planted nor watered, it started growing out of a rubble pile a few weeks ago and look! It managed to make a flower.

The ICF webbings finally arrived on Thursday, late afternoon. Morgan has been in a frenzy of activity ever since. Ben Flaster has been helping build the bracing and building platforms and the walls grow closer and closer to the bottom of the house.

Flaster helps the walls get closer to the bottom of the house.

He should be a blur.

To our great dismay, the extra foam parts that had been requested for the same delivery were forgotten, and our supplier is (of all places) on San Juan Island, so I got to make an impromptu courier run up there early yesterday morning. It reminded me of the very occasional Bainbridge/Bremerton run I would score as a bike messenger, getting on the ferry, making the delivery or pickup, turning right around and getting on the same ferry back, and getting paid for hanging out for an hour or two on the beautiful Puget Sound. Unfortunately, the fog was so thick yesterday that instead of reveling in the sublime beauty of the islands (which would have been my only payment), I was relegated to doing some computer work and reading a book. I still enjoyed it, though.

Ferry fog.

Barring unforeseen issues, we pour on Tuesday. Here’s a photo of the crazy unstable ramp situation we navigate to do laundry.

Laundry ramps. Like a circus act!

Wish us luck.

We don’t post much when there isn’t tangible physical progress being made. We are STILL waiting for the webbing pieces to arrive for our ICF’s, and so the work happening around here is on the phone, in the planning, the figuring, the nail-biting about how QUICKLY time is passing, and how SLOWLY the project moves.

We have had a request for a description of how it is to be living like this, so a little emotional/descriptive post for you all today:

Yes, we are still up in the air. Yes, that is costing us $50/day. The whole house rocks when someone as much as turns over in bed. The crazy narrow plank we have to walk to get in and out of our house is bouncy and feels like it should only ever have one person on it at a time. We are super over the romance of the Honey Bucket. Winter is coming.

Morgan is feeling the pressure of the coming change in the weather. We have had an unusually long and warm summer here, for which we are grateful, but the nights are cooling off and the rains will come again. For now, traipsing down the bouncy ramp at 3am to the Honey Bucket is… fine. It will continue to be fine, but less and less comfortable as the weather cools and the moisture falls. The handrails are there to give us balance, but won’t really save us if we slip. That’s a thing.

Another thing is that while we have water coming in to the house, we have to catch the water under the kitchen sink and shower in giant bins and then use a sump pump and a hose to move it to the sewer. Every day. I have washed my hair a lot less this summer because at the end of the day I just don’t want to go down under the house and fool around with the pump to get that extra room in the bucket. We were taking “navy showers” for a while, but now are luxuriating in the constant flow, as long as the showers are short and sweet.

Right now I have a series of extremely unstable ramps I have to navigate in order to get to our laundry machines, which are out in the weather back by the shop. There are concrete forms surrounding them, so a lot of up and down and projectiles in between me and clean clothes. That will change after the concrete gets poured, and I’m pretty stoked that I still have my own machines and haven’t had to hit the laundromat yet.

Last week, Morgan and I talked about the very real possibility that we will have to live somewhere else for a time this winter. We have a cute little 18′ trailer for just this purpose, which is one solution. We have a friend who has offered her spare room in her big house, and another whose mother has an apartment that sits unused during the winter… we have options. I think Morgan feels very guilty that we might be inconvenienced, but I reminded him that I signed up for this process with full knowledge of the impending discomfort, and that I actually lived in a house with no heat for 8 years in my 20’s. It’s temporary, and will be worth it, but I get why he’s anxious.

Someone asked him last weekend how he was doing, how he was feeling about the project. He said, “The first word that comes up is ‘humility’,” which is about right. This is an enormous project. Everyone always says remodeling will take longer and cost more than you hope or think, and that is true, and the truth is humbling, even if you had that in mind going in.

Huck has been totally fine with all of this. Of course he hates the Honey Bucket, but really, who doesn’t? He doesn’t understand why we would want to do this to our perfectly functional house, but he also doesn’t seem to be phased by the crazy disruptions of a house under construction. He did bail out to Grandma’s a couple of times this summer when there was no power in his room or the like, but again, who can blame him?

I should add, in case you didn’t know, that in the middle of this I have also had to move my office for the first time in 21 years. That challenge was distinctly unwelcome, but I have moved and I have survived, and all is well. My resilience and adaptability muscles are growing strong! We are all gaining strength in this way, which is good, it really is.

Now that we have the footings, it’s time for walls. We are building our cement walls with insulated concrete forms (ICF’s), which lock together like Lego bricks and go together very quickly.

Future mechanical room.

Future powder room.

Guts of the ICF.

Future crafting closet.

The only thing stopping these babies from being done already is that we ran out of the plastic dohickies that lock the insides together. More should arrive early next week.

In the meantime, Morgan has been calling concrete contractors to get quotes for pouring stem walls and retaining walls for the non-ICF bits, and for the slab. It’s an old refrain, “everything costs way more than you think it will”, and it’s old because it’s TRUE.

Today Ben Flaster came over to help move the electrical panel out of the way so we can slide a big beam in the south wall tomorrow. We still have power, and nobody got hurt. All that and the weather is still with us, we are very lucky people.

We did it! As of last Wednesday, we have concrete footings for our foundation.
A large crew was assembled at 6:30am for a truck to arrive at 7. When I left for work at 8am the concrete had just begun to flow, and I think the pour was all done by about 10:30. Morgan has lots of pictures on his Flickr account if you want to see the action.

Our friend, kEvin has been here this week helping out– his alternative to Burning Man this year. It was an awkward week for it, unfortunately, because of the pauses in action just before and then after the concrete pour (waiting for it, then waiting for it to cure), but he has been here this weekend to “make up” for those pauses, doing some of the more back-breaking labor that is beginning to really wear on Morgan. THANK YOU KEVIN!!
They are applying some kind of vapor-barrier sealant that helps insulate the slab. Next, walls!

Complicated pin-pile footing forms abut regular old fashioned footing forms.

We’ve been a bit lazy about posting because it doesn’t really seem like anything is happening around here– though Morgan worked hard every day. Morgan slaved away on those footing forms for a month, finally feeling ready to call for inspection last Wednesday. He passed with flying colors, simultaneously passing two other inspections related to setbacks and erosion control. Whew!

Unfortunately, for one reason or another, we have to wait until this Wednesday to pour concrete into those meticulously prepared footing forms. He has a crew rallied for early Wednesday morning, though, and concrete will happen, at long last!

Moving our poor beleaguered rock back into the upright position.

Rock is now standing. Guaranteed that someone will smack it down again this winter, unless we get some concrete behind it.

In the meantime, our excavator parked his small machine on our property for us to use between jobs. We used it yesterday (with some moral support from our friend Jay) to prop up the magnificent rock we have down on the corner, which has been knocked over at least twice and maybe three times since we installed it there several years ago. We live on a curve at the end of a long hill, a place where people regularly lose control of their vehicles and have historically smashed into our fence. The rock is meant to prevent that, but because it is proudly up on end, it means that they stop, but they knock it over and ruin our landscaping around it. It has been a couple of years since we tried propping it up again because without a machine, it’s a matter of a truck and some straps and is a bit trickier. With a machine, no problem. We plan to dump a bit of concrete behind it when we have leftover, just to give it a little bit more of a chance.

Insulated Concrete Forms came out of buphalo’s yard and onto our rack in the driveway, awaiting their final purpose– foundation walls.

The other thing we did this week was move the ICF’s from buphalo’s property to ours (thanks Justin Rodda!). He will be so pleased. These big Lego-bricks of styrofoam will become the forms for our foundation walls, and then the insulation for our foundation walls. Pretty nifty! They should move off the rack gradually next week after the footings cure and our walls can begin to take shape. Once we have concrete foundation walls, we can set the house back down. Looking forward to it.

This is what it looks like around here tonight.
The digging goes on, endless precise measurements and levelings, new tasks inserting themselves into this seemingly simple goal.
Finally, today, some forms for the footings are being built. This is a relief for Morgan after a week of complicated figuring involving drainage, sewer, slight shifts in retaining wall placement based on what was not excavated… I’m sure there is more, but it’s hard for me to keep up. Form building at last feels like construction instead of destruction.
Meanwhile, the garden grows, the flowers bloom, and summer is in full swing.
Of course we are feeling about a month behind, so we revise our hope to have the whole thing “weathered in” by the time the weather returns to just wanting the foundation and slab done in time to back-fill the holes and get rid of the dirt before the weather returns.
One foot in front of the other, and repeat!

New floor joists and Honey Bucket.

Last week the excavator scraped away our sewer line. This was necessary and expected, but it is a major bummer nonetheless. Even MORE of a bummer was the morning that Morgan forgot about the whole “sewer is disconnected” thing and used the toilet when his coffee took effect. Immediately aware of his mistake, he retreated to the shop to bemoan his mistake and discuss his options with buphalo. Suddenly, the sound of a flush and of water (among other things) falling out of the house… Huck had flushed the toilet. Fortunately, it’s just dirt down there; unfortunately, they do have to work down there in that dirt. Not directly on it for a few days, but, still. It’s nice and dry here in Seattle this summer, so that helps.

We used our trailer potty last week, which is fine and all, but has a limited capacity and nobody to come and suck out the black water on a regular basis, which means driving it to somewhere to dump it. Given the realities of our situation, we decided to pay for a Honey Bucket for a couple of months– our very own! Fresh and minty! Cleaned weekly! We’ve really made it, now.

Morgan actually removed the toilet from the house. No more mistakes. 

This week has been interesting. New, beefier floor joists are going in, which has meant that at various times there is no water coming in, no electricity, and no sewer. The sewer issue won’t be changing soon, but water and electricity are relatively flexible. Some of our outlets work– the fridge, for instance is being preserved– many don’t. I took a cold shower last night because the water heater didn’t get hooked back up. Invigorating!

Every day is an adventure. Thank goodness for the amazing summer we are having, it makes this all so much easier to be cheerful about.