Happy Concrete Slab Day!

It's 7:20pm and the concrete guys have just finished up!  The poor guys were working out in the dark and cold for the last few hours.  K helped them through the day, but they did the finish work alone.

This is the picture K sent me in a text at 2:15 today:

"Check it!"

It was probably about 30 degrees in the early evening when they were working.  And once the sun dropped out of the sky, the guys were working in the dark by truck headlights, work lights, and little LED headlamps.  Pretty amazing stuff.  I watched them from the patio door.

 

Now they're putting the insulated blankets on the slab, and they'll let it cure overnight.  K will cut lines into the slab tomorrow. 

K is EXHAUSTED.  She worked this morning at 7am, then left at 11:30 to come home and help with the concrete.  She's overtired, but still thrilled.  I can't wait till she's done with the cuts tomorrow, and then the relief can really set in.  Already tonight, she got excited for a moment -- "All the boring stuff is done, and now comes the fun stuff!  The framing!"  And she means it -- framing is her absolute favorite.  And this time she'll be building something that will belong to her, to us.

Speedy Inspection

Yesterday when I got home from work, K had great news!  It had been pouring rain yesterday, so she had a rain day at work at around noon.  She called the inspector again about our concrete form, and said 'Hey, I know it's last-minute, but I'll be at home today if you can come by.'  And it turns out that the inspector could!

It was also a good thing that K was home when the inspector came by because she (the inspector), had questions about our lot.  Since it's such a weird shape, she wasn't expecting the markers to be where they are.  But K was there to point them all out to her and they got the inspection done quick and easy!

So now back to bids from concrete crews.  A few months back, when we were optimistic about the project going quickly, K had posted an ad on Craigslist and got a handful of good responses.  This was a few months back, however, and concrete companies are busier in the summer.  Now that it's late fall, her new ad got a flood of responses and the bids were much lower!  She'll probably save at least a couple hundred dollars having the slab poured now, versus in the summer.  That's comforting, considering how frustrated and apprehensive this project has made her feel. 

She's hoping to line someone up for Friday, so we very well could have a slab done by next week!

Finished Prepping For The Slab

Lucky for us, this weekend was gorgeous!  We were able to get so much work done for the slab, and now it's all prepped and ready for inspection and pouring the concrete.

Started out with me taking a trip to the rental place to get the plate compactor/tamper, again.  Since the one didn't work well last time, we got a credit for another use.  This time the machine worked like a champ.

We put down all the rock and soil that we had, and got it compacted really well.  K dug trenches all along the sides of the form.  She's making a reinforced slab, so it can carry the weight of the garage and hopefully won't crack too much in the future.

In this picture, you can see that we really had to build up the left side of the garage floor to keep it level.  The ground slopes quite a lot in the back yard, so we dug down the right side a bit, but still really had to add to the left side.  The floor does slope to the front just a little, and the driveway will slope down to meet the existing asphalt.

The next step was to add a layer of poly as a vapor barrier.  The garage will be heated with some kind of space heater, and the poly will be there to help keep moisture from seeping up from the ground into the concrete slab.

It was a windy day, but we got the three long sheets of poly stapled to the sides of the form and taped along all the seams.

Next was the rebar, and we did this mostly in the dark, so I only have one photo.  K put rebar posts into the ground every few feet, and then we connected two rows of rebar to those posts, horizontally.  These will give strength and structure to the thicker sides of the slab.

It was pretty chilly by the time we were working on the last of the rebar, but we got it done.  K covered up the whole thing with tarps again last night, and this morning she called the inspector to see about getting it looked at.

Really, really hoping we can get that slab poured this week or next.  It will be a big load off K's mind to have that done before the cold sets in.  And then she can work on her plans for the building and materials, and take her time.  If the cold and snow holds off, maybe she will start building this year.  And if not, she will be good and ready by the spring.

Patio Door for the Kitchen

It's November in Minnesota, and although it's been a pretty mild fall, we know that our warm days are numbered.  Since it was a gorgeous day today, unseasonably warm for November, K thought she'd better get the patio door installed in the kitchen.

K got the patio door from one of her jobs-- they were putting an addition on that house and this door was removed and going to be thrown out.  K's not super fond of the faux-wood grain pattern on the door, but figures we've saved about $500 by salvaging the door.

Generally, we really like the layout of our house, but one funny thing is that there is no back door.  Obviously there's the front door out of the living room, and the door out of the mudroom on the side of the house actually opens to the front of the house.  It's not a big deal, but come summer, it will be really nice to walk directly out to the yard through the patio door, and to have the breeze coming in though the screen door...

In the kitchen, we had a large window looking out to the back yard.  The windows are pretty old, pretty drafty, and they vibrate and shake every time a train goes by.  The location was convenient for our window-unit air conditioner this summer, but hopefully we'll have our central air working again by next summer, so having a window here won't matter.

Let me just say this: my girl has some SKILLS!!  I knew this already...  I've seen houses and additions that she's built.  She's incredibly talented when it comes to building.  But it was really a treat to see her skills at work in OUR home!  From beginning to end-- starting to cut into the drywall to dropping off all the garbage-- the whole process took her less than 8 hours.

And I'm saying "she" instead of "we," because there was hardly anything I needed to do to help.  I helped clean up and keep the work area clean, I held up boards when she needed me to, and helped place the patio door.  But other than that, it was all her.  I just cooked dinner and kept taking photos to document the process.

First, she took the old window out:

Cut the studs out from the lower part of the wall.  She also had to move the heating vent from the wall to the floor in front of the door.  Cut all the siding off the outside of the house, in the area we needed.  Put in a new header, and then I was able to help her place the door and weather-seal the opening.

Sparks in the kitchen!

The area around the door still needs to be prettied back up, but at least it's sealed and watertight.  Inside the house, we're going to put in some more insulation before we seal up the drywall.  Outside, it looks pretty raw, but there may not be much we can do about it until we replace our siding.  (Which is pretty far down on our list, as far as importance and budget.)

The kitties (and K and I) love it!  We can look outside and see the whole backyard. 
K's going to install a motion light out there pretty shortly, so it will feel a bit safer.