Beams and Concrete

We've been hearing a bit of unrest recently regarding us not updating this blog frequently enough.  We're glad you guys are enjoying it, but it's tough to get online at the end of the day and upload a bunch of pictures after you've spent the day in a ditch shoveling mud.

That said, a lot has been accomplished in the past couple weeks.  For starters, Alex, Lindsay and I (but mostly Alex) took the bricks off the back of the house and cleaned them so that we can reuse them on the front of the new garage.  Getting the bricks off the house wasn't that rough, but cleaning the mortar off each and every one was a big pain in the ass.

On top of bricks (and before actually), we installed a steel beam in the basement wall separating the old and new basement.  With the help of a few extra hands, including Ryan's younger brother PJ's good friend Danny Young, we put a 500 pound beam in fairly easily.  Michael also put together a rig for his trailer and brought home 3 huge beams, each weighing in at over 3,000 lbs!  All at the same time nonetheless, and one of them was 34 feet long - you have to see the pictures to believe it!  Also, this would be a good time to point out that Ryan's brother PJ has done all the calculations for the new beams that will go into our house.  He's a super smart engineer and we owe him a ton for figuring everything out.  Of course...if the beams fail, we also know who to blame :)

Lastly, we got the concrete floor laid in the new basement, got the exterior basement walls waterproofed, and installed new french drains around the exterior of the house.  Not bad for a couple weeks work.

We've also included a couple pictures from our friend John Fitchwell's wedding, which we attended on Whidbey Island outside of Seattle this past weekend.  This was our first time to the Pacific northwest and we definitely were not disappointed, the whole area was beautiful.  However, there is only one word to describe the red eye on the way home on Tuesday night - shitty.

We spent the weekend on Whidbey Island touring wineries and celebrating John and Alison's wedding and then traveled to Seattle for a couple days to explore!  It was great to escape the construction for a few days.

Ryan and Alex starting to pull the bricks off the back of the house where the new addition will be.  Lindsay is not pictured cleaning the bricks, which we all agreed was the worst job!  We plan on reusing these bricks for the front of the new garage.

Michael and Ryan working on installing the new beam.  Having the right tools for the job - in this case a hydraulic press - is crucial in doing the job right.  Wouldn't have been able to lift that beam without it.

The hydraulic table lifts 4 feet, so we needed a couple concrete blocks to get it the full height

The finished product

Michael designed and built a steel structure that attached to his trailer to carry three huge steel beams from his work about half an hour away to our house.  The beams weighed over 5,000 pounds all together and the longest one was 34 feet long!  Look closely and you can see how the big beam stuck off the back of his trailer about 6 feet and stretched over his truck bed another 6 feet!  Luckily he didn't get pulled over on the way to the house.

Additional detail on the rig he built, he cut the parts out on his water jet at work and welded everything together, including the beams to the steel trusses to hold them in place.

The big beam is on top, with two smaller ones, 23 & 24 feet respectively, on the bottom

Michael welded the beams to the truss for extra stability so we had to cut them loose with a grinder to unload them

Our excavator Sean helped us unload the beams - here is Michael guiding the 34 foot beam into the back while Sean lifts it his bulldozer

Cutting the bottom beams loose

Guiding the small beams to the backyard

The concrete truck bringing concrete for the floor in the new addition and to fill in the whole that remained from replacing the sewage pipe in the existing basement

The concrete guys laying the concrete floor in the new addition.  The slanted thing going into the new addition is the shoot from the concrete truck providing concrete to the guys in the hole.

Looking right into the concrete shoot

The new concrete floor - beautiful isn't it?

This floor definitely deserved more than one picture

Starting the french drains, not the most fun job, but definitely happy we got them in right before a rain storm that would have turned the ditch around our house into a mud pit.  Ryan and Alex prepped the ditched, while Lindsay shoveled several wheel barrows full of gravel and dumped it in the ditch before Michael arrived and used his tractor.

Not Ryan's happiest moment, this picture was taken after he spent about 2 hours in the ditch shoveling out mud and throwing it 10 feet above his head.  Not only did I get super muddy, but if you look closely you'll see plenty of tar on me that was left in the mud from the water proofers.  This picture doesn't even do justice to how dirty I was because I took off my shirt, which was completely covered with mud, tar, and sweat.  In a future post, I'm going to list my top 5 hated jobs I've had to do in the renovation.

The yellow stuff you see on the wall is part of the water proofing of the basement walls.  They first put tar on the walls, then they put up the insulation to protect the tar.  Ryan and Alex were super excited about the fiberglass insulation when they were trying to prepare the ditch for french drains and kept rubbing up against it...itchy itchy itchy

That's gravel you see under and on top of the pipe.  Luckily, Sherry was able to secure us an extra truckload of gravel (great idea mom!) or we would have been in big trouble getting this done that day.  On top of that, Michael came home from work early and used his tractor to move the gravel, which is clearly a ton easier than Lindsay shoveling and hauling it in a wheel barrow (her back was very thankful!)