Sand bags

Today was a delight of a building day. I got all of ground ready for the first course of the foundation, and when I finished that I discovered that the sandbags had arrived in the mail!

Here is the porch picture. Not a lot of difference.


In finishing the ground prep work I needed to expand the dry well, which looked like this this morning:

I don't know how clear it is between these two pictures, but the diameter of the dry well is about doubled.
After digging it out I lined it with landscaping fabric

Then filled that with large rocks/concrete chunks, from the sidewalk excavation in the beginning of the summer.

After that, the top was covered with landscaping fabric, and it was covered over with dirt. I also finished leveling the floor of the house and the french drain.

and then I came in and discovered my sand bag delivery and I got started on the very baby begin of getting the sandbag foundation in place.

So the plan is to get two or three courses of sandbags stacked up tamped level, then the bales will go on top of that.

more trenches

Trenches

Good morning, good morning. Yesterday was fairly productive. I got nearly half of the trenching work done. That means that I might be able to finish today. Here are the pictures:

The view from the back porch (this probably looks exactly the same as yesterday, but I want to have this picture everyday)

Here are the trenches. It is still difficult to understand what is going on. The trench in the foreground is the new one. The old trench runs right through the middle of the house, so I am digging gravel out of the old trench and putting it in the new one, and digging dirt out of the ground to make the new trench, and filling it into the old one.

That might all be easier to understand from this side. This is a picture of the trenches from the other side of the house

In the picture above, the trench in the middle is the old one that has most of the gravel out and is being filled in with dirt.

Pictures

I am doing a bad job of keeping up with this blog. Since my last post, I've built the roof and shingled it. The plan from here on out is to update daily with pictures. I need some better photo documentation of the house progress, and perhaps I will start actually doing it.

So here is what the house looks like today:

This is the house from the back steps of the main house. here you can see my messy/dangerous work site. Some tidying is in order.

Here is the back side of the house. All of the cross supports are new as of two days ago. those big diagonal pieces are what is allowing the house to stand on its own. Before that there were all kinds of wood bits nailed to stakes in the ground holding everything up.

Here is a shot of the state of the foundation trench. This picture is a little confusing, but the trenches are a hot mess right now. This is the job for today. Getting them in the right place, and then moving the gravel.
Here are another two view of the trenches.

Here is the roof, complete with sealed skylights and shingles.

So that is it. I'm hoping to make some good progress in the trenches today. Winter digging has a different set of challenges then summer digging. Getting over heated is not a problem. But the first foot or so of dirt is frozen. Good thing I figured out the pick axe --> shovel method in the summer.