September 2008 Archives

Is this beautiful or what ?!

Be sure to click on the photo to see all the detail.  This is quality construction.  ($$$)

Tomorrow we cover with plastic and start laying rebar.  Hope to pour next week and then begin with walls.  I'm really glad to see the progress.  I know, you want to look some more at the kitty.

Have you ever seen a cat that has opposable thumbs?

This is Steve's cat, Wally.  Wally's thumbs actually work.  Wally is not very interesting otherwise (to me) but I thought you might enjoy a break from construction photos.

Enjoy another fine photo of Wally.

Shake hands, Wally, shake !

Okay, here's the progress I've been talking about.  As you can see, the pad is leveled to grade from the left rear corner.  It is quite high at the front right, which is the laundry room, but there will be a step or two down to the garage so that we don't have to build the garage up quite as high.  M-kay?

We used another 20 tons of road base today and I had to order another 20 tons for tomorrow.  We should finish leveling tomorrow and move on to forming and rebar.

This is the result of about an inch of rain.  You may be able to tell from this photo that the right and far sides have been deeped/steepened somewhat from the previous photo.  I held the camera close to the ground so you could see the depth.  Now all we need is more rain, a few fish, a few tropical lilies and some swim trunks!  Should be grand!

Well, there's been a little more progress than this but its the most recent photo I have.  These sandbags will hold the road base (sand, clay and limestone) in place when we fill in the middle of each "island" and keep it from falling into the beams.  They'll have to be stacked to make the pad level (to grade).  After that I'll cover each "island" with plastic and place rebar in the beams, then cover everything with concrete.

Here I've hired a service to clean out the pond.  Lonnie and I had partially drained it.  They're pushing some of the mud out through the channel we dug and the rest is being scooped out by the track-hoe.  Big machines, huh?  If you recall earlier pictures of the pond, it was all silted in and really nasty.

Another view.  Shows the technical difficulty of this job.

Nearly there.....

Ta-da!!  Actually they went back and made it deeper than this... to about 10-12 feet in the middle.

Can't wait for the rain to fill it back up!