This weekends work focused on putting in the 2 openings for our new doors in the south wall of the garage. We got all the stucco removed and one of the doors ‘roughed in’.
While
Max and I were working on the stucco and the tar paper, my dad was moving a couple
of pre-existing studs so that we could save an electrical outlet. After
the remaining studs were removed, header was put in and voila! a garage door opening.

The forecast for Saturday was for showers all day. We didn’t know if we would be able to get much work done.

It rained during the night but stopped in the early morning. It was not raining after breakfast when I went out and began to take down the tarps I had covering the cement (I didn’t want the water running off the roof to make a line in the newly poured driveway). It sprinkled a little bit, but not too bad. We decided to see how the strong wall would fit on the new stem wall. When we carried out the strong wall we realized we had a big problem.
While there is plenty of room for the strong wall to fit under the existing roof (since
the stem wall had been lowered [see previous post]), The roof over hang prevented
us from lifting the strong wall over the bolts in the stem wall. There was no way
we could get it installed. We scrambled for ideas. The one that we sort of settled
on was that we would have to jack up the corner of the garage roof about 5 inches
to clear the bolts. Not a good option, but the best that we had. Since this would
be an amazing hassle, we tossed around other ideas. We finally hit on one that was
brilliant in its simplicity. If you see me or my dad, ask us about our solution. Below
is the strong wall in place with room to spare.

We got so much work done that this weekend’s update needs to be in two parts. Below is part 1.

We had thought we would make much more progress that weekend than we actually did. We were anxious to get the inspector out so that we could get a concrete pour the next weekend. But we were not ready enough. My dad decided that if we were to be ready for the concrete on Friday, he would need a whole day to finish up the forms for both the strong walls and the new driveway itself. So he came out with Granpa Seal on Wednesday to finish.
Those
astute observers out there may have noticed that the forms for the stem walls that
I was supervising are missing from the Granpa Seal picture. We realized that the plans
only called for the stem walls to be 6 inches above grade. They did not need to be
six inches above the cement. We were pouring a ramp driveway, and so the stem wall
ended up only being 3 1/2 inches above the concrete. My dad spent Wednesday (and came
back on Thursday in addition to being here on regularly scheduled Friday) reworking
the forms to the revised understanding. Below is what we ended up with. The
inspector came by at 8:15 Friday morning and gave the ok to pour concrete for the
driveway and the stem walls. But of course there are always last minute changes to
make, so out came the tablesaw and the forms were slightly modified. We
were all ready to go for the concrete pour. Even my mom. It
turned out that while we were expecting an exact time for the concrete delivery (11a)
the company delivers in a window, and so we were early. During the time that we were
waiting, a neighbor that I had only met once stopped by. He was there when the truck
arrived and enthusiastically chipped in. He donned my mom’s rubber gloves and grabbed
her shovel. Jack
was an exceptional asset to us during the concrete work. He stayed for 3 hours and
definitely added a level of quality to the job.
I had no idea that such a small amount of concrete would take so much time and energy.

On Friday (13 Jan) we had our first concrete delivery of the project. It was a long road to get here, with some rainy Saturdays, but it was worth it. I missed last week’s project update, so I will post it now before this weeks.

Last weekend we spent half of Friday in the front yard, finishing up raised planter. We cut blocks for the ends and calculated how many more blocks we would need from Lowes. Then we worked on the side of the garage. We pulled some plaster off the south wall and dug out the second of the deep corner footings. What a difference the right tool makes. Before, digging the back footing, we had only a full sized jack hammer to dig the hole, and that single footing basically took all day to dig. This time around, we had a hand held jack hammer with a clay spade and it only took about 3 hours to dig the footing. Then we built the forms for the stem wall that would support the Simpson Strong Wall that was called out in the engineering plans. Below is a picture of me supervising the forms construction.