Home Addition Part 1

Well, this is long overdue.  I have been meaning to update our house project for quite some time, but have found other things to write about.  

Here we go!  Last September, Tom and I decided to add some more chaos to our already crazy life.  He is still in school working on his PhD and we have a missionary boy out and one that is getting ready.  We have soccer, violin, piano lessons, school studies and other things that are demanding of our time.  "There is no better time than the present", right?

Here is what we did:

We painted the grass where the addition would be going.  Fun colors huh?  There is a board across the back patio door to prevent little ones, like Tootsie Pop and Muffin from falling out when the hole was dug.  This was taking forever!  We were using that small backhoe and the tractor from the nursery.  They hauled most of the dirt to the neighbors who needed  back fill for their home.

We had to move sprinkler pipe and wires for the sprinklers.  This is a picture of Chu-Chi and Tom out working hard! 

 We finally called the Humphries to come and help with the digging.  They brought over this huge tractor with a bucket as tall as me.  The digging really went fast, it was just waiting for the dump trucks to return from dumping their load of dirt, that took a while.  

Once the ground was ready, they came in and poured the footings.  Then they showed up with the foundation forms and put it up in a snap.  They called in a pumper truck to pour the foundation.  My house is now covered in dust and dirt, it rained and rained and the forms had to be soaked with kerosene to prevent the concrete from sticking to the forms. Mmmm? The smell of gas in not my favorite. This is every mothers dream- trying to clean up all of this dirt!

This is where the real work began.  We decided to add on a storage room and a nice big 'basement patio' (I prefer to call it the music studio for future reference).  Do you see all of that gravel?  We had to haul a lot of this gravel by hand.  Yes!  We loaded a 5 gallon bucket with gravel and took it through one basement window and dumped it out the other basement window.  This is how I got my herniated disc in my back.  

This is where Tom's brains and my creative ideas collided.  Tom wanted to use the wood forms for shelving for our new storage room instead of doing the B-decking material.  We had Ryan Johnson come and form supports for the ceiling for the suspended slab.  We then put visqueen (plastic) over the wood to keep the concrete from sticking to it. (My idea!)  When the slab had gained its full strength (28 days later) we pulled the forms down and the plastic peeled right off the ceiling. =)  We could now use the sheathing for shelving.

Wow!  I forgot how pink this looked.  We had the concrete colored and then we stamped the top with a brick red. 

We had the boys pull all of the forms down and frame the shelves for our storage room.  We went to the extra expense of having a company come and spray the ceiling with insulation foam.  (Like 'Great Stuff" foam insulation)  They used a huge hose (the size of a fireman's hose) and sprayed the ceiling.  Then the boys cut and assembled the shelving.  I was the one who painted the entire room white!  It is so bright in there and the girls love to play hide and seek in there now.  

This is Mr Stealth and Rhino having too much fun. Mr Stealth is a hard worker and Rhino is a distraction and can be quite humorous.  This helps with having fun while you work.  Rhino was holding the board down tight, (there was a slight bow) while Mr Stealth nailed the board down.  Rhino looks like he is in pain, but he's not, he's just being..... himself.

Rhino is a good sport!  While building the shelves for this awesome storage room, I shot him in the cheek just below his left eye with a nail (16p).  The nail gun double shot and one went flying at him.  In this picture the nail appears to be covered with blood, but it is not.  However, it did bleed pretty bad for such a tiny little hole.  I'm very grateful for guardian angels and their ability to protect us.   The coloring on the nail is the coating that is used on all of the nails.  

Well, we took a break for the winter and have begun again.  I will post more later when we have more progress.