Author Archives: admin

30 Dec 2005 – Garage

Posted on by

It was a short weekend of working with rain showing up at 5am on Saturday. But on Friday we got a bunch of work done. We finished the digging under the existing slab for the footings of the garage wall. This work was done over two weekends, the first footing (east corner) took almost a full day of 2 people working. The ground was very compacted. Also, we had to use a full sized jack hammer to break up the ground.

The west corner footing only took about 3/4 of the day, with 1 person full time work and the second about 1/4 time. This time, not only was the ground marginally easier to work with, we also more appropriate tools. The hand held Makita mini jack hammer with the ‘Clay Spade’ bit worked wonders. What a different having the right tools for the job makes.

The footings were 36 inches long, 31 inches deep, and 24 inches wide. Not too big of a task except for one detail. Of the 24 inch width, 12 inches was outside the existing slab, and 12 inches was under the existing slab. So we had to dig blind with a claw hammer and e-tools to get under the slab. I guess this was a preview of work to come in digging the new footing pads under the existing house.

At the beginning of the work

A work in progress

Footing closeup

UPDATE 2 Jan 2006 : It finally stopped raining enough that
I could take a picture of the covers I made for the holes to protect against the rains.
I hope they did some good…

Covers for the footing holes

Christmas Day, 3:45 am

Posted on by

After a fabulous time at Matt’s grandparents’ Christmas Eve extravaganza in Woodland Hills, we headed back to his folks’ house in Valencia for some sleep. We all made it to bed around midnight. At 3:45 am I heard a very long, moany sort of cry – not coming from the baby’s room. I went to Max’s bed and there he was, sobbing and moaning. Matt joined me as we tried to figure out what was wrong – “Did you have a bad dream? Do you feel sick? Does something hurt? Did you wet your pj’s?” All these were met with a weepy “nooooooooo.” So after about 8 minutes of no other information, I said, “Did you do something wrong?” Max said, “Yeaaaaaaaaaaa.” “What did you do?” His reply, “I don’t want to go to sleeeeeeeeppppp.” I said, “Because you are excited about Christmas?” “Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.” So there you have it, Mr. Tender Heart. Fortunately, we got him back in bed and asleep within minutes. Later that morning we had a super time with family, though I think we yawned a couple of times. 🙂

Elise Navinach

Posted on by

Max was singing loudly today, “Elise Navinach, Elise Navinach! I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas, I want a bottom for my heart!”

Yes, I’m sure he’ll be a Spanish major in college. 🙂

Permits and Work Progress

Posted on by

On 8 December 2005, Toby picked up our ‘wet stamped’ set of plans from the City of Carpinteria along with our inspection sign off sheet.

We have permits.

Our first weekend of work was finishing up the 3 foot high block wall in the front
yard that will be a raised planter to hold the dirt that is excavated from the footings
we will dig. Below is a picture of the finished wall. Planter Wall

Ho Ho Ho

Posted on by

Here is the Santa picture – a very painless experience. 🙂 It was actually before Thanksgiving when we were in a KY mall with Diane. Di and I scooted away to get a manicure, and Matt had the task of conquering the Santa photo. The kids just happened to be both in red – which was very cool. There was no line and fortunately, no tears (just a stunned look from Baby).