Sorry to be so silent again. The flu went through the family for a couple of weeks. Then all the crazy busyness of the past few months caught up to me and left me tired out. In the process I have been learning a lot about letting go of habits that are not good for my physical, emotional or spiritual health. Maybe I'll share more about that another time.
This week a young couple arrived to visit us and see all that is going on with our team here. All this has not left a lot of time for blogging even though I've had a lot to blog about!
I shared last time that we are able to start in on some house building again! We were given a large gift of money to be able to go ahead and get the first floor enclosed! These past two weeks Shane has been overseeing the job of tamping the ground so that it's ready for cement floors to be poured. Most of our house is built over what used to be a sort of neighborhood land fill. :) Back when we were pouring foundation posts some of them had to go very deep to reach solid ground.
The tamping is hard work! Very tiring and very boring. But it must be done so that we do not end up having to repair floors that have caved in because of ground settling that was not tamped down properly. Shane spent a lot of time during that job checking in several times a day to make sure the guys were tamping each room enough and spending some time tamping himself just to show them it can be done and must be done! They were in a real hurry to finish the tamping and get on with pouring the floors.
Here's what they were using to tamp! A metal bucket that's been filled with cement for tamping by hand!
They did use a machine one day but it really couldn't do much better unless maybe you were a really big tall strong guy! Things are normally done by hand here so the crew does a better job since that's what they are more experienced with. Whew! Makes me tired just thinking about it!
Once there were some rooms that were tamped to Shane's satisfaction they poured some floors that did not need re bar.
Here is the office and rooms off the kitchen that are done. A bathroom was done too and the area that will be the stairwell. Last week they did the two bedrooms, living room and kitchen floors.
Here's Heidi showing off the kitchen/living room space that has re bar tied and ready for pouring.
Right now the crew is preparing the garage area. Making sure the floor is tamped, re bar tied (this area takes thicker re bar) and then they'll be pouring that tomorrow for sure!
Praise the Lord for his provision!
I need to show my husband those pictures! We are moving into his parents' old house next Saturday and instead of grass for a backyard, we have a cement slab - complete with re bar underneath. And, the garage is cement - with re bar. Too funny. I joke about getting a jackhammer and taking the slab out so I can have grass, but they look at me like I'm nuts. So someone came up with the idea of building a wood frame on top of the slab and filling it with dirt and planting grass. Hmm. May have to consider that. So glad you're making progress on your house.
Aug. 22, 2008 - Re bar