Thought for the evening

[jhetley]

"If you're a bird, be an early early bird --
"But if you're a worm sleep late."

Shel Silverstein

(See what riding a bicycle does to your brain?)

15.3 miles, 1:03

Comments

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

Causes duplicate posts? - or did you just have hiccups?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Obviously some variety of "operator failure." The exact failure mode remains in doubt. Probably should form a commission to investigate. That's one of the good facets of multiple-personality disorder....

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

Small giggle - you're answering in stereo, too! Or is there an echo in here

echo in here

Have they finished doing the foundation yet?

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Echo....echo....echo....

I only see one answer. Mild puzzlement ensues.

On the foundation front, we have had a redesign and work again progresses. I hadn't realized just how this damned place was built, way back when. Turns out that the floor framing sills bear directly on those monster granite slabs (think 30" by 8" by up to 14' in length) and that the brick you see on the inside is just backer. Now, that works okay for _building_, where you can work from the ground up, but putting the buggers back in place under an existing house is a .... bugger.

So we are switching to Plan B, which is to leave the granite slabs lying in the excavation as nice, solid backfill, and put concrete block on top of the poured concrete. I've also asked the foundation guys to tack a 2x8 pressure treated bearing plate on the existing sill before they lay the block, so that the old sills won't be lying on mortar. Granite doesn't soak up water, while block does.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of "As the Stomach Turns." Foundation guy says he expects to finish before the weekend, backfilled and all, so we _should_ be closed in before Ivan makes it this far north.

[persimmon.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Definitely two comments in my inbox - of course, the problem could be at my end, in which case we're talking double vision, or something like that.

My sympathies on the ongoing construction - EVERYTHING takes longer and goes through more changes than shows like Trading Spaces would lead you to believe. Some years ago, we put another storey on our house, and it seemed like a good idea at the time to do it in the off season for builders, since it was less expensive. So they came in, and started tearing off the roof on January 26th. In Canada. Oy.

Fingers crossed your guys are working fast, and completion happens before Ivan ...