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4212. thoughtful - 6/4/2008 6:11:40 PM Love the cat haiku!
4213. wonkers2 - 6/5/2008 12:58:12 AM Yeah. Who wrote it? 4214. thoughtful - 6/6/2008 3:24:03 PM i found it on line...apparently written by various employees at microsoft. 4215. wonkers2 - 6/6/2008 3:43:38 PM T'ful, how's the house coming? Any recent pics? 4216. thoughtful - 6/6/2008 4:46:35 PM it's coming...i'll have to upload them, maybe this weekend.
They cut down the 2 dead trees in the front, they backfilled the foundation and are putting in the piping and such needed under the basement floor in case of radon. Hopefully within a week or so the framers should start...at which point it will really start to look like a house!
4217. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 9:49:23 PM Thoughtful house update...
Water proofing and insulation added to the exterior of the foundation and curtain draining covered with crushed rock added to make sure we have a very dry basement. 4218. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 9:50:30 PM We're spending a lot of time and money underground. Hubby worked with an architect many years ago who always said, put your money underground. You can always repaint or add shutters, but you're not going to dig the whole house up again. 4219. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 9:53:00 PM Finally the town trucks show up to remove the two dead maples in front of the house. They were supposed to do it back in Nov before we even started, but better late than never. Certainly better than once the framing was up...lest they dropped a tree on the new house!
 4220. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 9:55:07 PM Those trees were huge. A woman stopped by the place back in the 1960s. She said she was born there and had just turned 100. She said the trees were huge even when she was a little girl.
But everything has a lifespan. I notice a number of very old maples in our neighborhood that have also been taken down recently...looked to be about the same vintage...mostly dead. 4222. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 10:00:57 PM Once the trees were gone, it was back to backfilling around the foundation. As the entire space under the garage had to be filled back in and as we had an abundance of dirt that came out of the hole, but included an abundance of rock (thanks to the old wisconsin ice sheet!) the solution was to get a rock crusher going to use what we had, but make it smaller and more compactable to fill in the hole and around the foundation.
Quite a scene...one big machine filling the crusher...the other backfilling with the output. The crusher itself is operated remotely, like a kid's toy. A very large kid's toy! 4223. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 10:02:39 PM Look closely and you'll see Joel, one of the excavators standing by the rock crusher...just to try to get a sense of scale. All such big equipment for such a little house!
 4224. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 10:06:06 PM Nice big garage, just like hubby wanted...big enough to park the excavator in!
Note too that we can finally walk up to the foundation. Starting to look more like a house! 4225. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 10:08:44 PM Piping gets laid in case of radon. Don't know if we have it and won't until the house is sealed, but if we have it, this is the easiest, fastest way to take care of it.
 4226. thoughtful - 6/7/2008 10:11:37 PM Latest pic from today:
Crushed rock has been added to the foundation floor and the pumped septic to handle the downstairs bath is sitting in the far corner. Curtain draining is complete, rough grading is done. Next step is to pour the basement floor and the framers should be starting soon. 4227. wonkers2 - 6/9/2008 2:57:53 PM Quite an impressive project! Keep us posted. 4228. arkymalarky - 6/9/2008 5:08:02 PM The most exciting part of building my house was coming home and finding the first floor frame up. Better than the foundation or the floor, was actually walking around the "walls." Unfortunately it was also the most traumatic part, because I found that 1) the contractor hadn't made the changes in the plan I told him to, and 2) he doubled the per-foot price on me. So Bob and I had a 3 day fight right after that (it was, thankfully, a weekend) over who was going to call the guy and tell him he was fired, then had a desperate scramble against the bank loan clock to find new builders.
You won't have that, though, so all you'll feel is the excitement, and that's the part that still stands out for me twelve years later. It's just too cool the first time you walk through your house.
4229. wonkers2 - 6/9/2008 5:22:43 PM The interior--wiring, plumbing, etc., is the slow part. 4230. arkymalarky - 6/9/2008 6:36:30 PM Yep, but the final stuff is the slowest--all the trimwork and stuff. But it's where you do all the fun shopping, too. 4231. thoughtful - 6/9/2008 7:26:42 PM god willing we have the $$ left by that time to do the fun shopping! 4232. jexster - 6/24/2008 10:07:43 PM This is a first. Just got chased off the pot by the cat! His kidney's aren't in the best shape so he couldn't wait until I left. I had to explain that I had my bidniss and he his...didn't cut it
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