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!