A Mind to Work

I feel like one of those gossipy little ladies..."I have SOOO much to tell you!"But it's true!! Now that my computer is working again I have so much to do:) These past two weeks I have been so seriously busy. We have been moving into a house that we are housesitting for a friend for the next seven months. Church has been uber busy and my 12 piano students are finally back into full swing for lessons! Between all that and building, my life has felt like one of those teacup rides at fairs...tons of turns and spins until you don't know which way you're facing. But when life gets back to "normal", it may feel kinda boring:) haha!

Okay, so we are done. Completed. Finished. The foundation anyways:) And it looks fantabulous!!! (yes, that is a "fantastic" and "fabulous" smooshed together...them by themselves just didn't do justice!) We had the best block layers in all of America come in and help us. Thank God for the Mueller Men. After they got the block brought to the land it only took them 2 1/2 days to do our foundation! And after you look at our pics you will see that that is no small feat! They used 1050 blocks with the back wall going 10 courses high! Seriously, if you fell off the back wall you could hurt yourself! Ahhhh! But I gotta say, that our view off of our back porch is gonna rock!!! It will be gorge:)!

Wednesday, August 4th our footers were dug and the concrete was poured. You have seen those pictures. Actually, here's one of the concrete and step downs ( a gradual move down the slope so they didn't have to handcut blocks to the exact size.)


We were supposed to get the blocks Friday. But Thursday, Paul got a phone call at 7:30 a.m. saying that the blocks were on the way to the land and they needed someone out there to meet them with the moolah. This may sound fantastic but in reality my poor hubby had just gotten off a twelve hour night shift and had only been sleeping for 45 minutes! But him being most amazing, he dragged himself out of bed and called the Mueller Men. They said they would meet Paul at the land and Paul and I headed out the door ( I wasn't gonna let my man drive himself on no sleep...no way!) On the way, the Mueller Men called Paul and told him that they were going to need a concrete mixer if they were going to be able to start on the foundation right away, so we went to rent one. There we go...

When we got to the land, the truck was there waiting on us. A HUGE semi truck loaded down with a trillion blocks! Actually it is 1150 blocks. And at $1.04 a block we kept a close eye on it!! Here's the picture.



So, the driver takes down this pretty amazing looking machine that evidently he was going to use to move all the block off the truck down to our lot. That thing was awesome! I did not get a picture though :(

It took about 30 minutes to unload all the block and to drop off the ladders and plates and materials we would need. We paid him and he was off. I left as soon as the block guy left and on my way back to the house it started pouring down rain! Buckets and buckets...yes, it decided to rain after two weeks of no rain on the day we start our block work! But no worries! It gave the Men a much needed break and it ended up only raining for an hour or so. They got to work as soon as it got done. And in case you were wondering, rain is okay for cement. I was kind of stressed that it would ruin the concrete work, but evidently it's good for it! Yay!

Anyhoo, the block work was started. Here are a few random pictures with explanations of the materials and such. This is pretty self explanatory.




The block was piled up where it was needed. This is going to be a mini shed underneath our home where we can store tools.

The ladders...a strengthening material for the block. (I know when I mentioned ladders earlier which ladders you were thinking of! No, these are not step ladders or extension ladders, but rather just block ladders)

I don't remember the names of these, (you know me!) but these were put about two feet apart or so all around the foundation. This is what the I Joists will be fixed to. (The I Joists are part of the flooring system, which will be next) These "things" are secured to the foundation with concrete.

The official "concrete mixers" :) Fifteen yards of concrete is a lot!

Our front porch will be here. I think eventually we will add on to our porch system, but for now, this is all we will need with our big porch being in back. You can't see it well in this picture, but there is an angle on the left side of this porch where we will be putting a wall of windows for our dining room.

Halfway through the block laying.

Bro. Rob and Paul talking about how high our back wall will be. And Isaac working on our back wall.

Vents that will help ventilate underneath our home. We opted for the less expensive version where we will have to manually open and close them. Oh well. Automatic vents were not on our priority list:)

The piers in the middle where our main beam will go. Most of the weight of the house will rest right here.

The HVAC pad where the unit will sit. There is an opening right at the block work for the duct work...

This is the little "room" where we will put our tools and such. I told Paul this could be his mancave but he absolutely protested! And here I thought I was being generous!! lol

Some of the Mueller "men" :)

Bro. Rob working on the porch

Here's the back wall: 10 courses high! (about 7 feet high) Yikes, and with another 11 inches of flooring and then an eight foot wall with a second story this is gonna be one tall house!!!!!

Our leftover block, about 100 or so. We were able to get almost $200 back for it! Yay!

As you can see, those pictures were pretty self explanatory:) I like when that happens. The block has been done for a little over a week now. Today we got our flooring truss system. I am going to get pictures of the papers and the whole process. Paul is starting tomorrow with my brother, Nate, to put the floors on. Saturday, men from the church are coming to our land to put the main beam on and to help with the rest of the floor! Such a blessing.

A good thing that we got this week was builder's risk insurance. This will cover all of our uninstalled items (in case people steal or whatnot) and it will be insurance for all those who decide to work with us. I hope we never have to use it, but as insurance goes, if you don't have it then that's when you need it! We'd rather just go ahead and buy it:)

This week, my job will be to figure out our window measurements...and that brings me to a pretty neat thing real quick. In our Master Bedroom I am having a ten foot wide "bay" window. I am putting "bay" like that because it's not technically called bay. The window that we wanted would have cost us $1700!! Outrageous!!! And that's just the window unit, not the lumber and extras that would be needed to put it up!! I almost choked when we found that out. So our lumber guy did some figuring and helped us come up with an alternative that I actually think is better...we will put up three windows in the shape of a bay. The exact same size windows and everything! And it only cost (with the extra truss flooring) $800!! Talk about a deal! Yes! God is good:) But, onto my job. I have to figure out what all our window sizes will be. We are having 16 windows in our house. The larger the better for me, but I may have to tone down for Paul's sake:) He's a little concerned about money, of course! I will be thrifty, dear, don't worry!! We are planning a trip to a home salvage yard in Nashville to see if they have any windows in their warehouse and we will also be looking at other house materials. I'm excited to go! Hopefully we can get some great deals!

So,

On to build,

Rachael