This week they were constructing the footings for our house.  The started the week with only our surveyed corners, and by Tuesday all of the formwork and rebar was constructed!  Wednesday they poured the footings, which was super exciting to see, and by Friday they had already started on forming the walls.

Monday they made all the cuts and had it laid out.

Just some quick math for the garage retaining wall’s footing…they must have run out of graph paper 😉

Joel and I took the boys to the property on Tuesday and Cameron was shocked at how small his room seemed.  Overall the house feels big, but when you’re looking at one bedroom it’s strange but it does feel small.  I think it’s because you’re out there with nothing else around you except acres of trees (and stockpiles of dirt).  So when you compare it to your surroundings, a 13’x15′ space does seem little.  I guaranteed him that it would be plenty big – and that it’s bigger than the room he’s in now which he’s even sharing with Spencer!

Here’s a shot of Joel and the boys standing next to the excavation for the basement – just to give you some scale.

By the end of the day on Tuesday the formwork was up and pretty close to being ready for concrete.

On Wednesday they poured the footings. From the concrete truck to the pump to our footings.

They reached over the excavated area to get to our footings.

Another picture of them pumping the concrete for our footings.

Here’s the finished product Wednesday night…we have footings!

Check out that rebar 🙂

There’s Cameron standing in his bedroom on Thursday.

The guys even worked the Friday before the 4th of July! Lucky for us! And they started to form the walls up in the basement.

We did have to make one design decision this week – the ceiling height in the basement.  We designed the upstairs of the home to have a standard height of 10’ – most rooms are 10’, some are 9’, one is 11’.  The basement to have a consistent height of 10’.  However, to form the 10’ basement walls, they would have needed to use an extra row of formwork.  To save a couple thousand dollars we opted to reduce the height downstairs by about 4”.  Everyone’s guaranteed me that we won’t be able to notice a few inches off the ceiling when we’re already over 9’6”.  Let’s hope not!  In any case, maybe we’ll be able to use that extra money to upgrade something that we’ll actually notice and use.

Drilling Update

They’re still drilling for water this week.  Last week they hit a pretty big rock and the guy ended up having to drive to Eugene on Monday to pick up a new part for the drill.  And by Wednesday they had broken another part and still not completely gotten through the rock!  I told Matt to have them dig it up so we can use it for landscaping…if only it weren’t ~200-feet deep 🙂 Wednesday evening they parts of the drill home to fix them and by mid-morning on Thursday they had FINALLY gotten through the rock and were back to drilling.  So not much progress has been made in depth (only at 210-feet) on the well this week, but they did make it through the rock, so that’s good news.  Let’s hope they find water next week!