We have a garage door :)

The garage door is in!!!! It won't be long and we will have a finished garage.  We will put the door handle on in the next couple of days and we will have a place to keep some stuff.  Michelle picked out the fancy door with the fancy windows and hardware.  The garage turned out really nice, I wish the house was getting done as fast, but it wont be long and all of it will be finished.

The Egress window is installed

Our builders brought in a micro excavator to dig the egress window for the basement.  They didn't want to put any pressure on the new walls, and this excavator is just what the doctor ordered.  They tarred the basement walls and dug the hole for the egress window.

Once they attached the window to the wall, they tarred it really well so it wouldn't leak.

The basement walls are in

It has been a while since we posted, and there has been quite a bit happening.  Michelle has been busy finalizing the bathroom and kitchen, and Shane and Jesse from Legend Homes have been busy putting our house together.  The whole process around the basement walls is an amazing ordeal.  They bring in the cement trucks full.

 
The big pump truck pumps the cement out of the cement truck into the basement walls.

The guy tight ropes the wall and fills the form with the cement out of the pump truck.

Once everything is dry, the forms come off and our new basement is ready to go.

Things are forming up nicely

They had to dig a bit of dirt out after the rains, but the hole didn't collapse.  Shane from Legend Homes has his crew working hard to get things in place quickly.  Things are starting to form up nicely, now that they have the basement forms in place.  It wont be long and we will have walls, granted, they will be cement walls, but we will take what we can get.  You can see a glimpse of the shadow selfie in the middle of the concrete, notice how skinny I look.  I am so trendy  :).  At least, that is if a shadow selfie is a real thing.

Here is a better shot of the basement window.

Here is a shot of the garage.

Cross your fingers that Isaac Newton is wrong

Isaac Newton said "What goes up must come down".  Hopefully, when he said that he wasn't thinking of basement walls, but I can tell you that his quote keeps popping into my head when I look at the sides of the hole.  A couple of the walls are starting to cave in.  They put a brace up to hold the wall, let's hope they get the forms in before Def Leopard kicks it, and the walls come tumbling down.

 The chance of rain is 65% Sunday night, cross your fingers that the walls don't fall if the rain does.  On the bright side, I suppose we will see how well the gravity drain works, not exactly what we wanted, but we gotta try to stay positive.  We won't let that damn tornado beat us down, hopefully our new basement walls feel the same about the rain.  Pray that things hold up, at least until the walls are poured, then the walls can tumble down.   The dirt walls that is, not the concrete walls....hopefully.

The footings are poured and set

This was a good way to end the week.  The footings are poured and we are waiting on the forms to come in.  It wont be long and we will actually have walls, not real walls or anything, but basement walls will be better then what we have now.

They loaded the concrete into the excavator and carried it to the hole, this was so much faster then doing it by hand.

While droppng the concrete into the footing forms they would hang out of the cab to make sure there was enough concrete in the form..it looks good from here, but they know what they are doing compared to us.  :)

After they dropped the concrete in the hole, the "hole" crew spreads the concrete flat.  They got a lot of work done quickly today.  The digger crew worked their butts off to get all of the footings in place, the walls should start next week.

Take that you damn tornado, we are making some progress.

The Digging is done

The digging is done and we are pretty excited.  It won't be long and we will have some footings poured.  It will be really nice to see some actual concrete going into the hole, instead of them hauling it away.  We can hardly wait!  They have the drainage roughed in for the gravity drain, and it runs to the backyard.

They covered the black pipe in the picture above with the pea gravel below.  Tomorrow we will have concrete!

And the digging begins

Shane our builder(Legend Homes), and digger man as Michelle refers to him, started digging our basement today.  They found the water and sewer and marked the corners of our house.  They dug a little pile today and put it in front of the garage.

Here is the pile that they created today, finally some progress.  The mess that we cleaned up from the damn tornado is starting to come back after all that time we spent cleaning.  We are finally seeing some real progress.

Here is digger man and his sidekick hard at work.  Michelle really needs to get their names, but they are doing an excellent job.  She says they are really nice guys.  They also mentioned that we should put in gravity drainage with a sump pump to back it up.  This was a good idea and we are planning to do this.

Here is Michelle next to the excavator, she really wanted to drive it, but digger man was already gone.  She said she was going to ask to drive it tomorrow.  It isn't a Cat tractor, but I guess we will live with it as we want things to get done and so this might not be the best time to throw them off the property,  The damn tornado is making us make sacrifices all over the place.

The old Driveway and Basement are removed

This has been a productive few weeks.  The basement and driveway are finally pulled out and the detached garage is almost built.  Things are moving along very nicely.  It wont be long and we will be mowing grass, I can hardly wait.......Just kidding, hopefully nature takes its time for the grass to start growing, but I hope everything else starts moving a bit faster.

Here is the hole where the basement used to be.  The guys at Turf Worx really did a great job pulling the driveway and foundation out.  They went over and above on the job and even pulled the fence posts from the broken fence out.

 Here is a larger picture of the old basement, as you can see the garage in the background.  We are still waiting on the garage door, but the special order will be here in two weeks.

We aren't feeling great about that damn tornado, but things are starting to look better.