March 23 - Gravel poured

On Monday (23rd) the gravel that was beside the port-a-john was spread out in the basement. This necessitated building a small ramp down to the front of the basement (there was an existing ramp on the back).

The basement filled with gravel. Except for the covered entryway area which is not.

Looking back towards the road (north). The dirt ramp can be seen in the top left and the gravel can be seen more clearly here.

Preethi poses in front of the gravel filled basement.

So much fun before, here's some more pics from around the lot.

Silver wades into the stream. Frequently, he'll lie down in the stream and start snapping at the water in an impression of what Preethi calls "Crocadog" and I call "Hippodogamus"

That random circular piece of concrete? That's a well. If we have a son, he will NOT be named Timmy.

Electrical hookup on the lot, it's kinda on the northwest corner of the lot (end of the cul-de-sac). Currently the electicity bill goes straight to the builder.

Fritz, Silver, and I walk down a trail that parallels the stream.

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March 21 - Some material delivered

It rained hard and then remained wet for a while so not much happened. Specifically, the wooden supports for the footers were removed. But then it looks a lot like it did before.

Footers near the entrance.

Footer detail.

Some material got delivered, though.

Perhaps the most important piece of construction equipment.

Some forms for the basement walls.

Gravel for the basement floor (concrete to be poured over the gravel)

Random pictures of the land

Since so little was done over the week, we took some random pictures of the land.

Our stream.

A bridge over our stream to our field. That's also our ridge in the back. 6.2 acres is a lot of space.

And here's a pictures of Silver (left) and Fritz (right) in the field across the bridge.

And here's Silver saying hi to Beowulf - a neighbor dog. Lots of dogs in the neighborhood. At least on our street, there's about twice as many dogs as houses.

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March 12 - Footers Poured

The forms are all complete, the driveway is done, and the concrete for the footers have been poured. The foundation walls (and all the exterior walls for that matter) will end up sitting on the footers and the concrete slab will be poured up to them. There's actually a bit more involved in a footer than this indicates (i.e., beyond the concrete and wood, there's a vapor barrier, mesh, gravel, and rebar for reinforcement).

Low level view of footers. On the main level, looking from back to front on the left side, bedroom4, dining room foyer, great room.

Low level view of the footers at the front of the house. Eventually, the main entrance will be about 2.5 feet off the ground.

Detail of the garage footer.

Stones for the temporary driveway is now spread out (making it functional) with excess concrete on the stones.

Front left of footers (bedroom 4 on main + garage).

Footers at the entrance looking back to the garage.

Wilbert (who Preethi used to report to), the dogs, and Preethi (somewhat hidden by Wilbert) look at the footers. We bring people out to the lot... a lot. In fact, we like showing the lot so much, we made a blog!

At the garage looking down the slope at the back of the house. We're walking down to the stream to show Wilbert the rest of the lot.

Dirt pile looking down the farm road. You can kinda see the acre or so clearing through the trees in the top left of the photo.

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