A Concrete Solution
HUGE news on the ranch this week! We FINALLY have concrete!! It did not come without a hitch though. To give you the entire story, let’s go back to 1 week ago. The foundation crew called last Friday and said the weather looked optimal and we should push to frame the footings Monday and pour concrete Tuesday as more snow was moving in Wednesday through Friday. I will be honest, we were both scared to death to take that topper off the foundation hole with such a small window. If anything went wrong, we’d have snow in the hole late week and all our hard work this winter would be wasted. We knew we’d have to take the risk eventually though, so we decided to pull the topper and agreed if it didn’t work out, we’d sell and move to the beach! Ha! Given that I’m writing this, you can conclude that we did NOT move to the beach…yet! ;)
Saturday I had lined up a friend to come help Kris take the massive topper off and boy was it a job! The 40mph winds made carrying sheets of plywood an interesting task. We were so thankful to have help! They worked sun up to sun down, while I stayed busy bringing them food and water. Sunday, Kris spent most of the day shoveling yet more erosion dirt out of the hole, cleaning up our snow melt trench up top, and I took on the task of once again cooking the ground with the propane torch! We were NOT going to fail inspection this time and with temperatures hovering around freezing every night, we figured a little more heat wouldn’t hurt.
Monday brought brilliant blue skies, warm sun and the foundation crew. They set up all the footings and then we anxiously awaited inspection at 10am Tuesday. Once again, we had warm sun, bright blue skies and an answer to prayer! We passed inspection! Shortly after, the crew showed up with concrete! This is where the story got a bit more interesting.
The concrete company showed up with a truck twice the size our foundation crew ordered. This might not be an issue for some, but the truck barely fit down our driveway and the weight left huge ruts behind. Once the truck got into the build site, the massive stabilizing feet that had to come off the side were so wide, it was going off the site into soft dirt and sinking. Kris suggested they move the truck 10 feet right to fix the problem, but that seemed too much of an inconvenience to the driver who whined, blamed everyone else and suggested we just quit and not pour! My oh-so-sweet, non-confrontational husband informed him there was NO WAY that was happening and pretty much that no one was leaving until that concrete was on the ground! I would’ve LOVED to have seen this conversation! He ran and got some wood from our foundation topper and quickly built a platform for the sinking foot to sit on. Problem fixed, now get to work!
The foundation crew made quick work of the project and in less than 2 hours, we were the proud new owners of concrete footings! A thing of beauty! On the way out however, the concrete truck dumped the extra concrete where we told them not to, and left a huge pile of heavy, wet concrete behind which Kris then had to shovel into buckets (50 5-gallon buckets to be specific) and haul off to the location we had designated. Ugh! Maybe he was mad Kris made him actually work??? Oh the joys of the construction world. At least we have a huge checkmark next to step 1 and after 5 years, we can finally move to step 2!
