Holy cow, it looks like a house!

What a difference a few days makes! The guys are furiously framing and before we know it we'll have an upper floor.

From the west -- this is the guest room.

Standing in the guest room, looking east.

The boys' rooms (tall windows) with their bathroom (high window) in between.

From the east, looking at the boys' rooms on down.

More foam ... and wood!

Today the guys installed a layer of ecofoam on top of the waterproofing on the exterior of the walls. The framing started today, too, but the wood didn't get there until after Bryan and I left. Photos to come later this week.

The fault lines running through the concrete walls mark the different loads of concrete. The guys stirred the concrete to mix it together, but some areas still ended up with definitive lines. Interesting, but structurally no big deal.

Gravel!

The gravel for our subfloor is in -- the concrete for our floor will be poured on top once the lower floor framing is finished and the dirt is backfilled around the house. Next week the framing starts, and in the meantime everyone should be eating far too much turkey and pie.

The gravel also is helping us with our muddy mess; we can walk around the site more easily now, but the driveway is still a disaster.

Waterproofing

We also had three PGE trucks and a plumbing truck here today -- and still no power, though we do have our box:

Unfortunately, our neighbor's PGE box was full of dirt and the wires had corroded and had to be replaced. Now the PGE guys are building a retaining wall for the neighbors and insisting we need one, too -- at our expense, even though a wall wasn't in the plans from PGE. But, since PGE will already be building the wall for our neighbors, maybe they can just come on over and build ours as well. The conversation continues ... Maybe we'll have power next week.

Big ol' concrete walls

And a plumber putting in the plumbing pipes. Here he's working on the boys' bathroom.

Now THAT's a wall!

The forms are coming off and we have real walls! More specifically, 59 cubic yards worth of concrete in the walls. Next up, vapor barrier will be applied to the exterior of the wall (the same capillary block that was used between the footings and the walls), then foam, then dimple board. Eventually, after some of the framing and the upper deck is in place, dirt can be backfilled into the gap between the hill and the wall.

Walls!

The site was busy yesterday as cement trucks queued up to pour our foundation walls.

The guy on the left has the big-boy remote that controls the cement;
the guy on the right is pouring the cement into the wall.

The guy on the left is stirring the cement in the walls to eliminate air pockets.
Val is smoothing the top of the cement.

The guys keep busy while they switch the empty cement truck for a full one:
They fill the shorter walls on the south side with the cement remaining in the lines while
previously filled walls are stirred to remove air pockets and smoothed.

The walls will dry and cure over the weekend, and next week the forms will be removed. If all goes well, framing should start on Thursday.

While we were on site watching the cement pour, we marveled at how small the house looks under the big, open sky. With walls delineating the spaces, we can see the area that will encompass the guest bedroom, bath and closet -- and boy, does it look tiny! Walking through it made it seem somewhat more reasonable, but this is the wonder of building: Rooms that seem plenty big on plans and when measured out and compared to our current home seem unbelievably small when there's no roof to contain them. We just have to remember that open air is deceptive, and to have faith in our plans.

Prepping for walls

Fall is in full swing at the site ...

And so is prep for pouring the foundation walls tomorrow.

The walls will be mighty heavy when the concrete is poured and wet; the braces will help keep them upright.

Wall progress

The wall forms are filling in, and now most of the house -- everything west of and including the laundry/mechanicals room pushout -- has both front and back wall forms for the supporting concrete walls (the ones built into the hill).

Looking from the middle of the house toward the west.

The laundry/mechanicals room pushout.

The space between the wall and the hill will be backfilled with dirt.
That's a lot of dirt!

Concrete will fill the space between the forms and become our wall.
That's a lot of concrete! 

The wall is just a bit thicker than this spray paint can is tall.
(The can was only for reference; it's gone now.)

This eastern wall will be under the deck from the great room.
The area marked by rebar, heading off  to the right, will be our exterior storage.

A great tool for managing the crazy thick mud path down to the excavation.

On a side note: This project has been excellent for the directionally impaired side of me. At least in this one spot in the world (even with no ocean or highway in sight!), I know exactly where north, south, east and west are. That's personal progress!

Walls! Kinda ...

What a difference a few days makes!

On Friday, the new addition to our site was stacks and stacks of wall forms:

These particular wall forms are European (as are pretty much any energy-efficient building tools and concepts used here in the US), and they are rented. Our guys install the forms on what will be the front and back of the walls, with the wall-supporting rebar in between. They pour cement between the forms to create the walls, and once it's dried they remove and return the forms. Voila! Walls!

These forms are straighter and provide more precise angles than the commonly used (here in the US) wood forms, which can bow and warp.

With a lot of these forms and a whole bunch of new rebar in place, the site was an entirely different place yesterday:

The corner on the right side of the photo shows where the front wall forms will be installed; 

the entire middle, including the rebar, will be filled with cement and become the wall. 

We also have temporary power hookups, which don't have power yet but should any day now that I've paid PGE to extend the power line to our property (ouch!). 

This will also allow the guys to hook up our well pump and use the water to wash the mud off truck tires leaving the property (trying to keep the road clean), since our property is currently a mud pit:

All this means that sometime next week, we should have cement in the walls and clean tires driving down the road. Woohoo!