Concrete Form Fail

 

As I drove away from the house this morning, I saw that the concrete forms for the driveway strips had been started. I was pretty excited!  We've been waiting for the concrete guy's schedule and the weather man's schedules to find a day or two without rain, to finish this last step so we can start on landscaping and call this thing DONE.

 

When I got home I grabbed the phone and went outside to take pix for C, who is in Osh for the air show all week (another story entirely). He had told them to let me see the forms before pouring. Good thing! As I was walking down the hill, I realized I was following a winding path, so went inside and got the culinary string to see just how bad it is. I tied my string to the top stake, then walked it down to the bottom stake on each side...and got more and more angry as I walked back up to see the results.

 

Here's the right side strip, looking down the hill toward the street. I'm calling this "Concrete Form Fail - Right Side". My STRAIGHT string is about 6" from the wooden form.

  

...and here's the left side...you got it..."Concrete Form Fail - Left Side". Not AS bad, but still left me wondering how anyone could stand at the bottom of the hill and look up and say "I did a good job today." Or did they think the wheel base of my car will get wider right there, and narrower toward the ends of the strips. Or were they thinking at all? 



Calling this CRAPSMANSHIP "Concrete Form Fail", and hoping it'll be fixed tomorrow when I get home.

Love the lights at night...

Are these lights cool or what?  Got em at CostCo for about a tenth what the online 'carriage lights' go for. We were thinking they'd 'do' until we found and can afford something better, but you know what? We like em! The glass is kind of bubbled so makes that cool pattern on the walls, and the LEDs will burn out when we're about 125. They have photocell thingies too, so go off at dawn even if we forget to turn them off. What can I say?  You forget things when you're 125...

On another note -- the 'drivable grass' will be installed this week, so no more mud!   YAY!!!  This whole mud pit in front of the garage doors (probably stained with splashes huh?) will be drivable grass mats, with grass growing in between (see www.soilretention.com), then we'll have two strips along the side of the house to drive on, and strips continued on down the hill in concrete. No giant slab-o-concrete for these green kids, huh? Smart Cars will like rolling across grass to park in their new garage.  :-)

Almost there!

Bathroom fixtures done, floor tiles done, counter top & sink done. Still need to paint cabinets downstairs and floor upstairs, and maybe paint the garage doors. This glaring white is a bit much, don't you think? Taking suggestions on a mix of white, Elephant Gray and Cavalry Blue for the garage doors.

We're going to go with 'Drivable Grass' (see http://www.soilretention.com/drivable-grass/do-it-yourself/) for the garage pad, and strips for the driveway. It'll look like a nice Zoysia lawn, not a huge concrete slab. The folks at the SuperSod place in Lawrenceville have been great to work with so far...waiting on quotes for materials and installation now.

Finally -- long awaited photos!

When this saga started, I marked a spot on the dining room window sill for my little Fuji Finepix camera, and took a picture out the window whenever there was a change outside. I finally located the little cord to download the pictures, and discovered that Picassa would string my [almost] lined up pictures into a movie. So here it is...drum roll please...my first YouTube video of the Garage Mahal In Progress!!!

Garage Mahal In Progress on YouTube

...not sure why the captions don't stay up longer...will continue to improve/add to this as I learn more!  Enjoy!

Hurting in places we didn't know we had

Wish we had taken before and after pix of this (what good is a blog without lots of before/after pix anyway?!??!). When they cut the trees for the garage footprint we had some debate about what to do with the logs. A friend said he wanted the wood for firewood, so we asked Karl to leave the cut trees for us to dispose of.

They left ALL of it -- logs, branches, twigs, leaves -- in a huge pile of debris the size of a house! We spent the weekend feeding branches as big as 6" diameter into a chipper that ate them as fast as we could shove 'em in. Saved us some cash, but we've realized we may be a bit old for that kind of manual labor. We got it DONE though! There's nothing left but one more load of firewood, and two big logs that we'll split ourselves and maybe keep or give to neighbors.

We'll tackle walking, bending over, grasping things with sore hands in a couple of days, after some much needed rest and ibuprofen.

Phrase-For-The-Day: Monolithic Slab

Karl-the-Builder has been talking about pouring a 'monolithic slab' for the garage foundation. Figured I'd go ahead and Google it to see what the heck he's talking about. We were looking at the flattened dirt pile in the back yard, wondering if there would be footings or foundation walls to keep it all from sliding down the gentle slope...to the steep slope at the edge of the property that drops 80' off a bluff. Found this drawing and zipped it over to Karl, who confirmed this is the plan, which I also found this morning drawn out on the final plans he gave us (DUH!). Since nothing goes under the concrete slab but plumbing pipes, they'll pour the slab and footing/foundation edges in one big glob of concrete, with the sides framed in so there's a thick edge, like the edge of a pizza but rolled underneath and squared off on the top and sides. We'll paint the exposed concrete 'wall' and plant gardenias to cover it up...maybe build a low deck sometime in the future.

Dirt moving begins...oh my!

Lots of misconceptions on my part getting corrected rather rapidly! I was thinking a little 'skidsteer' kind of front end loader was going to scoot around the back yard moving dirt in neat little piles. This monster has been growling around for three days now! Poor dog is freaking out, especially since her side yard fence has been moved to just around the deck, and her flying leaps off the deck stairs are now into a chain link gate. She shivers at thunder...this thing rattles the windows. We'll all be happy when the monster gets back on its big trailer and goes away.