May in the PNW

Neal put down the last piece of plywood subfloor at 5 on Wednesday.  It started raining at 5:30, and it hasn't stopped. When I came home, I seeded the entire site.  At least we won't have to water.

Neal's off on a supply run...and there's a new stack of plywood and studs waiting for him here.

waiting out the rain

The Big Cover Up

And then it was Monday, and it only took 3 hours to fill in all that work...

Finessing the edge.  So good to see him doing 'light' work.

Chief Inspector

Still striding, right past our front door.

Oh, Superman

It's Memorial Day Weekend, but we're not off work. In fact, Neal did the work of three men today.

It started on Thursday, with a fun field trip to the Anacortes pool and parks for Uma and Neal, part of a school field trip. Neal put his truck in line, thinking he'd pick up building materials after the kids got on the bus to head back to Lopez. Not to be. Due to mis-loading on the ferry, he was overloaded. He had to park the truck suddenly and run to the boat. He only made it because of the ruckus caused by the other parents and students, alerting the crew and captain (our Lopez dock attendant chose to ignore him. She's so helpful.) So he was off-island without a vehicle.

I was at work during all this, and went home at 1:00 for a late lunch, thinking I'd head back to finish the day with Lindsey. I walked in, checked the mail, thought about what to make for lunch, and then realized I'd better check messages. There were four from Neal. He had the cell phone, and was trying to contact me to figure out how to get the truck to him. I looked at the clock: it was 1:25. The only boat that could get it to him on time was the 1:35.

I grabbed the extra truck key and ran for my car, not sure what to do, but heading for the ferry. On the way there, I realized that it was Memorial Day Weekend (wacky ferry scene), and that we needed the materials for the excavator that was coming tomorrow.

When I got near the ferry, the last three cars were loading. I made a split second decision: I parked the car next to Neal's truck, got in the truck, and drove it on the ferry just as the gate was closing. In my 12 years on Lopez, this was my least meditated ferry trip ever.

I'm glad I did it: I met up with the school bus with no trouble, and surprised Neal. We found most of what we needed in Anacortes at Frontier (right before they closed for 3 days), and they turned us on to an electrical supply. We made it there 10 minutes before closing, and bought the huge wire needed to connect our power supply to the house. Big gratitude to North Sound Communications, who will be doing our electrical work. They really helped us out with this phase of the work.

Our luck had turned from the morning, and we made it on the 6:35 ferry back to the island, with our load of materials.

Friday morning, we woke knowing we had work to do before Buck came with the excavator. First we laid 4” perf pipe around the foundation for a perimeter drain. Then we pulled out our drawing of downspout locations (done ahead of time, how about that!), and connected 4” pvc pipe to drain the roof water out toward the landscaped area.

We started the excavation day with another dump truck: this time, 10 yards of drain rock. They put it around the foundation, over the piping we had just laid.

When I came home at the end of the day, they had backfilled the foundation and cut the final grade at the north side. Our house looks like it belongs on the land again! Very exciting, to stand at floor level and imagine our finished space.

On Saturday, the site jumped back two steps. Time for more trenching. Two, in fact. One for power/water/phone, and another to the septic. Even knowing that, with luck, they would be filled in on Monday, it is disconcerting to see the trenching and mounding.

Which brings us to Sunday, the day between excavator days. Neal has this one day to lay all of wiring and piping in the two trenches. As he said at the end of the day, “this is too much for one person in one day”. Yes. It was. But he did it, my SUPERman.

ha ha ha ha ha ha (Laurie Anderson, 1981)

Uma and Milo, playing skee-ball septic

Lincoln Logs

Remember those? 

That's one of our favorite things about building. Sunset drops off a pile of sticks, and Neal turns them into a house.

Get your 2013 calendar at Sunset

When I showed up on the site after work, Neal was ready to go for a run.  Running shorts, faded t-shirt showing signs of a big work day, and a neon pink plastic ribbon tied around his neck.

J.Crew photo shoot, 2009

"Nice." I said, touching the plastic knot.

"I was the 250,000th customer at Sunset!" he said.  "We won $1,000 of building supplies, and I'm the May calendar guy for 2013."

He moved 5 yards of sand, and didn't stop dreaming...
 

No work today

 We're resting!

While Uma's with her Mom for Mother's Day,  Neal and I are 'mothering' the garden, the maple trees we planted among the firs, and a new grove of elderberries.

Post Flow - the day after

The pour was not the end of the foundation labor:  all of the forms Neal had so carefully built had to be removed, cleaned, stacked, and returned to their owner.

Thank goodness for Dennis, who came back to spend yet another backbreaking day on our site.  The two of them did the entire stack in a day!!  That's a lot of scrubbing...

Even the barbeque gets scrubbed...

We got Flow

A rare day on Lopez, sunny and warm with occasional clouds blocking the heat.

Enter one large, diesel-emitting, very loud cement mixer, with accompanying boom box playing KISS-FM even louder.  We heard songs we have not heard since high school.  Once after an AC/DC segment Lou Reed's "Take a Walk On the Wild Side" came on.  You have to wonder if the KISS fans had ever listened to his lyrics.

Add to the mix five wheel-barrow shovel-wielding friends, willing to mess with concrete for the afternoon.  Sadly, this is the only picture I managed to take, right before the cement started flowing.  Once that happened, there was no stopping for photos.

Eric, Steven, Corvus, Dennis, and Bruce - you guys can move some concrete! - we so appreciate your help.

The chute could reach about 2/3 of the way around the stem walls, so the rest was moved in wheelbarrows.  Heavy wheelbarrows.  Two trucks and 13 1/2 yards of concrete later, the footings and stem walls were full of stiffening concrete.

The work was immediate and demanding, yet oddly satisfying. The perfect ending for the day was sharing a meal with everyone afterwards. Neal made cheesy potatoes, salad, grilled salmon, rockfish, some of Scott's beef, and even made a pie (strawberry rhubarb).

Where is it?

Currently the #1 question being asked...I'm hoping no one really wants to know if it's on our land or not.  They really want to know "where on your land is your house", right?

Here's where!

 

Neal's been busy since the last entry, working every day on setting up the foundation for the concrete pour (tomorrow!!).

A big decision was - pumper truck, or no pumper truck?  Would a regular truck be able to get close enough to do the pour?  Would the huge pumper truck be able to get close enough? Do we really want to pay $800+ to find out?

When a regular truck came for a dry run and made it back to the west side of the foundation, Neal decided on a hybrid situation.  We'll need two trucks of cement, so the first one will unload in all the places it can reach with the chute.  The second truck will be unloaded by Indian women carrying the cement in buckets on their heads, just like you see in the movies. 

Not.  Six wonderful people are coming to help us wheelbarrow it around to the east side of the forms.  Should be some interesting photos from tomorrow's event...