Footers Part Two and Three!

The footer trenches got filled with footer stuff, aka concrete, on Friday Jan 26th in the morning. By the time we both got off of work, we had to go check it out! The first couple of photos were Friday night when the concrete was still a bit soft and you couldn't walk on it yet. But every step of the way is progress closer and closer so we get excited for everything. 

The block for our foundation was also delivered this day.

The Ground is Broken

... Such a strange way to describe digging in the dirt. "Broke ground". It really just sounds like a problem. If anything the ground is getting "fixed" to support our home. English is stupid.

First things first - Our contract is finally signed. We took up the task of writing the contract ourselves with a little help from the Google god. It was a laborious task because there were certain clauses that our builder couldn't agree on, and visa-versa but ultimately we came to a consensus and feel comfortable that we have some protection and contingencies if something should go awry...knock on wood. We agreed on the wording last week and got it signed yesterday with our builder. Really should have finalized and agreed on the contract before starting the work, but hey... timing doesn't always work out perfectly and it ultimately had no affect on the build timeline.

We also have been tasking ourselves with finding the right front door, exterior doors and windows for our home. These are details that the builder will need to build in the walls with the right rough opening sizes. We think we landed on a great deal for the front door. More to come on that later.

On to the progress! Mike came to the property over lunch because our builder told us he'd be digging the footers today. No progress over lunch--Texted him a couple hours later and he said it's done. Man, these guys don't mess around. We stopped over to take a look at things starting to look real official. The task was accomplished with a mini excavator and a small bobcat front loader. The bucket on the excavator is about 2 feet wide, so they dig the footers that wide and about 1 foot deep. They've placed the rebar stakes in the center of the footer trench and will be laying rebar throughout the lengths and corners and pouring concrete this Friday. The plan is to lay the foundation block on Monday. It sounds like we might even start seeing  some "stick" walls here in the next couple weeks or so.

Anyway, the footer is not much to see in person, but it did help give us a better perspective on the size of the home. Sorry the photos aren't very good. Would really like some imagery from a drone but can't see shelling out hundreds of dollars for a toy that i'll take a few pictures with, then likely crash into a fiery ball of death.

There are several of these large holes inside the perimeter of the footer trench. I think these are for concrete pillars to support the internal structure of the house. That's my guess anyway.

That's it for now. Will have more photos of the footers and foundation here shortly.

Toodles!

Mike & Liz