It's easier than it's made out to be!

Looking at other people's blogs with all the posts and links makes it look like a blog should be easy. That is the same for building a house. I worked for a builder for a year and he made it look like it was so easy to bring all these craftsmen together and put a house up in nothing flat. He built our first house in Helena. We had just looked at some lots with him and hadn't even been approved for a loan when he called us up and asked if we had liked the one style of house he had shown us and what lot we liked best. The next thing we knew, he was digging the hole, the middle of February, no less, and 6 weeks later we were in our house!

As I said, Tom has been working on this project for probably 2 to 3 years. He figured he was going to do it all so he has been looking for tractors and backhoes and all kinds of equipment. We drove to Ohio two years ago and he purchased a backhoe that goes on a tractor which we didn't have. So last fall he finally purchased his tractor. I was a little skeptical of this since it's one of those things that's easier than it's made out to be! Fortunately, my brothers convinced him that he wanted an experienced backhoe operator to dig the basement.

We haven't used the backhoe but he has used the tractor and a skidster that my brother owns. A skidster can't lift a very heavy load and he had two incidents where I thought he was going to go head first into the hole. It's definitely a guy thing with the tractor and the skidster. Everyone (only the "engineers", Tom, Mel, & Rich) get a turn on backfilling and moving dirt with the tractor. But when it comes time to do the critical work like digging a trench, we call in Bob. I am not sure if it is OK to use last names here so I won't. And usually Tom calls him Bobby.

So Bob started out digging the basement. The lot we're building on is actually 5 - 25' lots which used to have 2 really old houses on them. They were torn down and we are building further back on the lot because of the flood plain. That is a really long drawn out story which also explains why Tom has been working on this for over 2 years. Anyway, to get to the point, Tom thought that there might be an old septic system where the basement was being dug. He told Bob that he needed to go down another foot and a half, and low & behold, there was a layer of wood covering the septic system. Bob dug the wood out and filled the hole. He was surprised that he hadn't fallen in the hole with his tractor and we were really glad that he found it because we could just imagine the south east corner of our house dropping down into that hole.

So getting the basement dug was the easy part. Getting the workers and the materials takes some time. And getting the blog up to date takes even more time with all the events and family things going on. So on the next blog I will figure out how to post the pictures that Tom has taken since the footings were done, the ICF walls were put up and the concrete poured. I have to get the whole story from today's pouring of the floor. There was 3/4" of rain and hail that they had to clear off in order to pour the floor.