For my friends and family who grew up with me in Arizona, can you believe this is where I live?! It's interesting how the 30s feel almost warm if it's sunny. Never having lived in a place with an actual change of seasons, I thought winter would feel much colder than it does. Instead, it feels like this is how it's supposed to work somehow. I guess by that I mean that each season is long and so when you move from one into the next you're ready for it. I am feeling ready for spring though, just a little. My kids told me it was 60˚ in Seattle and I was a little jealous. You certainly do deserve the nice weather though after the multitude of rain you've had this winter. I'm not missing the rain, just the people.
On to the holes - Jodi's brother Jeff came to Poughkeepsie this weekend with the sole purpose of helping us with a project that has had our work on this house at a stand-still. Since we're opening everything up and replacing walls with post & beam construction we needed to build specially designed footings that were the brainchild of our architects. Instead of pouring footings in our concrete slab and putting posts in the middle of our room, we're essentially building footings into the existing brick walls, fondly referred to as bearing blocks. Ingenious, but a little scary as Jodi and I have stood many times staring up at the walls and talking through this project that will ultimately carry the weight of this house. Each time we've dressed in work clothes, made our way to the basement, plans in hand, and then talked ourselves out of doing it. Each block posed it's own set of unique problems and there are six in all. Jeff spent a day pouring over the plans and then we dug in, quite literally. By the end of the weekend we poured concrete in our first block and removed the bricks from our second. We hope to pour the next one by the end of the week and then after the blocks cure we will hang our first beautiful beam. Jeff is safely back in Illinois tonight and we thank him from the bottom of our hearts. Now we can proceed with confidence. After these blocks are completed, the rest of the rebuild can move forward more quickly.
Hole #1
Hole #1We poured the concrete through a hole in the floor above.
This perplexes the little white dog.
3 comments:
I don't quite understand exactly what you're doing. I mean, I get that you're going to create beams (horozontally?) to support the upper floors, right? But, if the concrete cures without the beam inside of it, will you be bolting it to it later? Maybe I'm way off.
Snow is easier to deal with when you can look at it from the warmth of your home.
I'm off to Portland today for a gymnastics meet with Tyler.
Miss you all!
Good post.
Hi Jodi - my name is Amanda and I'm a producer at Newstalk 1010 - Canada's largest talk radio station. We were wanting to speak to you about your fight to swim topless tomorrow on the show. Shoot me an email and I can provide you with details! acupido {at} astral {dot} com
Post a Comment