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.