History in the Walls

Now that the footings are done, the crew set about building the foundation walls.

Lots of cutting and aligning have been happening over the past few days to create the walls of the basement. It's incredible how much concrete will actually go into this - another two trucks they estimate.

In about 5 days they'll start pouring the concrete into the walls, and that's when the fun starts: enter the pumper truck!

We had a fun request for the concrete guys that they were more than happy to oblige: we asked them to encase one of the old granite stones from the old foundation into the new. It'll be a great homage to the old place, and a cool story to tell whenever anyone comes in the garage.

The outer form of the house is really taking shape. You can see how tall the back wall has to.

This is the east wall, and it's big. about 9' tall in all. It's all that stands between us watching TV and all the soil in the back yard.

The top left of the house is the entrance to the garage.

You can see along the left side how much space there is from the wall to the ultra blocks. Eventually, the ultra blocks will be removed and this space will all have to be back-filled.

We recently learned that the crews have nicknamed our project "Atlantis" - apparently the water rises pretty quick here.

Here's the inside of a concrete wall form, with all the rebar and snap ties. Fun!

Along the right side of this wall will be a path that leads to the entrance of the MIL unit.

In the center there is a granite stone from the old house foundation. The crews were nice enough to suspend it in there for us so it can be a part of the new wall. When the pour is done, you'll be able to see the stone from inside the garage.