Help!

Tom had the basement dug and the footings poured when he hit his first snag for contractors. The contractor that did the footings cost twice as much as he expected and he was waiting for them to give him a cost for the entire construction. The contractor must have thought we were RB's (rich bastards) because the quote, when we finally got it, was excessively high. In the meantime, Tom had been in contact with his friend Rich and they got started on the basement before we ever got a quote from the contractor. Then TJ started helping us and he brought in Chic and finally Mel showed up, and they have been busting their guts ever since.

Initially, I wasn't sure we were going to get things going since Tom didn't have any help after the footings were poured. My brother Butch helped him remove the footing frames but he already works 6 days a week. I helped spread gravel one night while Tom ran the skidster. That was enough to let me know we needed HELP!

The little orange caps on the rebar is to protect the kids that came around to play "King of the Hill" on our dirt piles. Tom was afraid that one of them might fall in the hole and hurt himself. After the first good rain and all the dirt turned to gumbo, they quit coming around.

Here's Rich (the beard) and Mel (the ponytail) working on the eastside, basement level of the house. This is a conservative little town and I am sure the beard and ponytail caused a few comments . There are always a few people coming by during the day to see how the progress is going.

Now I have listed the crew, but you have to know that there are other people that are giving support all the time. One of the snags that they ran into initially was attaching the rails for the ICF forms to the footings. They were breaking drill bits like crazy. You now have to imagine what kind of thingamajig I am trying to describe. TJ ended up attaching it by using a thing that forced it into the concrete by bullet power. Anyway, when he got done, there were all these bullet cartridges on the ground. Hey, guys, this is a good time to jump in and explain exactly what it was. Butch came up with this bullet hammer thing and it sure worked good. And it sounded like a bullet going off.

The other terrific person that has really been supportive in this is my mother. My mother (sorry, I am going to tell her age) is 81 and she still works in the Other Place at least 2 days a week and cooks lunch for my brother Paul when she is not working. Tom and I are staying in the basement while the house is being built and she even let us bring our dog with us. She really doesn't care to have dogs in her house, but sometimes Dru gets treats while she sits by the back door. So because she cooks for my brother, the other guys - Tom, Mel, and Rich - usually benefit at lunchtime. Believe me, they are well fed. And last Sunday, she told them she would have breakfast for them. By 10:00 a.m. she had made a batch of banana bread, stirred up 2 kinds of cookies, and cut up watermelon, honeydew, and canteloupe. And we had sausage, hashbrowns, toast, and eggs for breakfast. And while they were still sitting at the table discussing some details of the construction, she went out and washed and polished her car! She is one terrific lady!

So we have help and the support of family and friends. This is when you realize how good people really are and how lucky we are.

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.

Here We Go!!

This makes me think of playing Mario Kart on Nintendo 64 with the kids when they were younger (and so were we). Both of us liked that phrase "Here we go!!" I guess you'd have had to hear it to understand what I mean.

We are building a new house and someone suggested that we start a blog because there seems to be a lot of interest in the house. So I decided to take a cue from my daughter-in-law who has had 2 different blogspots, first, the hansentwins when our twin grandchildren were born and she was trying to keep everyone posted on their status because they were so premature, and then she converted to the second and current blogspot, fivehansens, where she keeps us posted and amused with the difficulties of raising 3 children all under the age of three!

Tom has been working on this project for several years. He is a professional engineer and an electrician. His intent is to build a house for us (he says for me) for our retirement that will be user friendly to stoved-up old people, easy to maintain, and affordable to heat.

Like I said, Tom is an engineer and an electrician. He understands design and wiring but he is not a carpenter. I think he can do anything so why shouldn't he be the contractor and builder? Well, there were some problems with getting a builder and we had some outrageous price quotes for the construction, so it fell to Tom. But on the plus side, his friend Rich from Bremerton, WA offered to help. And Rich got additional help from his friend Mel. They are all retired engineers and Rich has building/carpentry skills also. They have been working on this project for 2 weeks now and yesterday they, with the help of my brother Butch, TJ, and Chik, poured the basement walls. I didn't get there in time to get pictures but I hear that about a half a dozen other people did! We'll have to see if it makes the local paper.

Tom has been taking pictures from the start and that is my next project for the blogspot, to post the pictures. In the meantime, if you want to get an idea of what the basic design is, check out the Katrina design at http://sunplans.com. We liked the concept and after Tom made all the modifications we needed, had an architect draw up the plans.