Construction Kids (Cont'd)

Christian had fun playing on the equipment while trying to backfill the foundation.

The lake froze over for a week or so and the kids enjoyed playing on the ice. The neighbors say that it doesn't freeze every year, so this was an exceptional year. Go figure, the year we build a house we get the crazy weather (two feet of snow, torrent rains with flooding and colder than normal temperatures). Who is that Murphy guy and where did he get those laws?

Construction Kids (Cont'd)

Brooklyn and Alliver (Andrea's brother)

Brooklyn

Brayden, Brianna and Brooklyn

Construction Kids

Brayden, Brianna, Ashton (Andrea's brother), Brooklyn and Andrew (another brother).

Brianna

Brooklyn


Andrea and Bridger

Brooklyn, Brayden and Brianna

Our kids have been troopers. They spend most of the time in the car watching movies and keeping warm and dry, but they can only stay in there so long. Bridger spends most of his time in the backpack and is content to enjoy the ride. Occasionally, Andrea's brothers will join us

In some of these pictures in the background you'll see that the level of the lake is to the top of the dock. It actually rained so much that the entire dock was under water. The heavy rains came before we poured the slab, so we had the underslab insulation and radiant tubing in and the footings dug. There was so much water that we had a sump pump going on to drain the foundation hole and the footings. We had some long nights pumping out water. We are glad that phase is over!

Main Floor Framing

With each level we get more and more excited! Th main level has a two-story family room and two story entry. It was interesting how they framed these up.

Bring on the Wood! Basement Framing

Everything is now in place for the framers to begin. The framers got to work right away and built the basement level. There are three framers and they do a great job. The basement only took three days to complete . . . on to the next level!

Waterproofing the Foundation

With the concrete in we needed to waterproof before putting in our footing drains and backfiling. We hired a company to spray an elastomeric material on the walls the seals off all the cracks and spaces. Then we had them install a drain board. The drain board helps the water so when it comes in contact with the wall it drains easily to the bottom where the footing drains pick it up and drain it around the house. Living in Washington, drainage is very important with the amount of rainfall we get.

Basement Slab

We got a break in the weather and we were able to get our basement slab poured. Andrea and I dug out the footings for our load bearing walls. We found out we over dug the footings and since every wall in the basement is load bearing, we dug out alot of sand and ended up using a lot of concrete. Yeah, 40 yards (4 trucks) of concrete went into our slab, so our house should be plenty solid!

After the slab was poured as screeted, it started raining and the concrete wouldn't set up. We went out to check on it that evening and it looked like the consistency of peanut butter. We were freaking out and called up the concrete guys and they said it was raining so it wouldn't setup. They ended on coming out at 11 pm and working through the night to give us a smooth, slick finish. We plan on staining the concrete and using it as the floor, so we wanted a very nice finish.