New Beam in Place, Footers Poured

Our new steel beam is now in place and most of the old foundation has been demolished. You can see it in a pile in the center of the big hole. We will use it as part of the new drainage system (cool, huh?). Virginia Concrete, just a few miles away will provide the rest of the material need for the drainage. It will be recycled concrete.

The retaining wall seen in these pictures was behind the old foundation. It will be demolished, yielding another chunk of square footage we did not expect in the basement (about 200 sq ft).

As you can seen in the photos, the footers for the foundation walls have been poured. They passed inspection earlier this week. Once the old retaining wall is removed, the guys from North Star will pour the new foundation walls. One of the pictures shows the truck load of forms they will use for the walls. When we were there on Wednesday, one guy was lifting the forms, one-by-one, and carrying them down to the work site. Each one has to be sprayed with a release agent to pop the forms off once the concrete sets.

Speaking of the fabulous work by North Star: last Thursday our project manager, Dave, showed us a giant rock sitting near the southeast corner of the new basement. It had been uncovered once they excavated the 4 feet of soil in front of the old foundation-soil that was supposed to stay put until we discovered we would have to rebuild the foundation. Dave said it was cost about $1500 to get the excavation equipment back on site to remove the rock and asked how we felt about leaving it in place as a tribute to the local landscape. We were warming up to the idea until friends pointed out (thanks Duncan) that the slab would likely crack around the rock as the house settles. We raised that point with our contractor in an email and suggested that maybe we could drill a hole through the rock and slide some rebar through to stabilize the connection between rock and slab. Less than 24 hours later the North Star guys had used some of the equipment already on site to unearth the rock. Sweet!

We’ve been on top of picking out our finishes, but the contractor is really starting to get on us about selecting the plumbing fixtures. If the framing is up in a few weeks, as scheduled, I guess they’re going to want to start doing plumbing rough-in asap. One thing we’ve been struggling with is finding a decent shower and bath for the master and kids’ bath, respectively. They both have to be drop-in units (acrylic, fiberglass, etc.). We’ve read so many horrible reviews about these kinds of units cracking after a year or two of use. Recently, someone recommended the Sterling (Kohler) economy line, made of Vikrell. Does anyone have experience using showers or tubs made of this material? Is it durable? Decent looking? Easy to clean?

With the warmer weather rolling in, the grass on the back of our lot has been growing out of control. A big thank you to our neighbor, Mike, who performed a surprise mowing for us last weekend.

Hopefully many more pictures to follow as the progress keeps on coming!