Weekly Update: 8.19.23
At the start of this week, our build site was a mess of rocks, dirt piles, and half-finished piers sticking out of footing holes much larger than they should be. By the end of the week, I look out from our tent windows to see the tidy beginnings of a floor system. The progress, for us, is impressive I think. Each day is full of so much learning, with one family member or another always being stretched to try something new. While we have a fair amount of construction and remodeling experience among us, none of us has ever built a pier foundation, so we find ourselves frequently googling this or looking up that in a book. Thank goodness for how-to manuals and friendly online folks willing to share their know-how.
We were optimistic about this week since both our dad, Samuel, and brother Jeremiah were on vacation. We planned to jump right in with a productive weekend, but instead, we got hit by several rounds of storms. Friday night into Saturday morning was a rainy, thundering mess. We headed down to our storm shelter in the wee hours after we got a severe thunderstorm warning. When it was all over, it was too wet and muddy to work, so we spent the day picking up groceries and supplies.
Sunday was forecasted to be even stormier than Saturday. The bad weather started early and lasted much of the morning. The NOAA weather radio station was calling for a much-worse second round, so we spent the afternoon getting ready. We took down everything inside our tent that could fall: hanging items, dishes on shelves, and anything made of glass. KY3 projected strong storms for hours throughout the night, starting in the evening. But as the storms approached, the start time kept getting pushed back. We watched the radar in amazement as the severe mass of weather literally opened up and went around us. Finally, around 11 pm, we realized it wasn't going to get bad enough to go to our shelter. We put things away and went to bed -- so thankful for a God who watches over us.
It rained plenty that night and into Monday morning, but by the afternoon we were able to get back to work on our foundation. We finished most of the piers and started back-filling some of the foundation holes. On Tuesday, Jeremiah and Grace finished stacking blocks while others back-filled and leveled the area under our house. As soon as we were done mixing mortar, we switched to mixing concrete and filling piers. We worked all day until dark, mixing well over 2,000 pounds of concrete by hand. Our brothers Jeremiah and Levi did most of the mixing, with us ladies helping as much as they would let us. At one point, our dad ran to town to pick up a second wheelbarrow, just to speed things up. We quit when we ran out of concrete -- with just one pier left. The sun was going down anyway, so we celebrated with a late dinner of Mexican food. I don't think anything has ever tasted quite so good.
On Wednesday morning, Dad and I ran to town to pick up some more concrete. While we let the piers cure, we finished up the back filling and prepping for sill-plate installation. On Thursday, we installed our sill plates. It felt amazing to be working with wood again -- though I admit those 16-foot pressure treated boards weigh a ton. We had planned to cut everything with our miter saw, but after hefting a couple of those massive boards into place, we switched to our circular saw. Grace had never used one before, but she learned on-the-go and did a great job. When we finished the sill plates, we started on the girders.
In the afternoon, we took a break to enjoy some low-sugar homemade ice cream. We flavored this batch with maraschino cherries -- and it might have been my favorite flavor yet.
On Friday, we finished the girders. We worked quickly and efficiently -- and for some reason, no one took any pictures during the process. The end result was satisfying, though. We got to use our Metabo framing nailer for the first time on this part of the project. It made things go so much faster, we are considering getting a second one.
This morning, we got an early start working on the joists. It was brutally hot, but we persevered. We started both corners first, so that we could check for square first thing. We were square to within 1/8-inch, which is good enough for us.
It was a long week in some ways, with longer work days than we have had for awhile -- thanks to the much-cooler weather during the first part of the week. It felt good to make so much progress so fast. The foundation took so long, it feels so good to see things starting to move quickly. We have our sub-floor stacked and ready to go next -- but after that it will be time for more supplies. This week, we will be back into the higher temps, so I plan to spend my afternoons mapping out our walls on SketchUp and getting ready for our next lumber order. I'm ready for summer to be over, but I'm determined to enjoy its last month. Thanks to all the rain, everything is lush and green again -- and I know I will miss this verdant glow once winter settles its gray shadow over these hills.
The pace of life out here can be frenetic, but it is also interesting and challenging and often exhilarating. Grace, Bonnie-Jean, and I find ourselves switching hats so fast, sometimes it makes our heads spin. We go from serving up breakfast to running string lines to training puppies to record keeping to cutting boards to drawing house plans to taking pictures to hanging laundry to hammering nails to cooking dinner to computer work to dressing up for a video-date. It's both exhausting and empowering, as we learn just how much we are actually capable of. It isn't easy -- especially the relational aspects of this lifestyle. There is no one like a sibling to bring out your childish side, in all the right and wrong ways. There are days getting along feels impossible -- and then we find a way to do it, and it's beautiful. It feels like we are growing in directions we never knew existed, using muscles we didn't know we had. God knew we needed this life -- for all the reasons we wanted it, and for all the reasons we didn't know we needed it. It's a work in progress at every level -- but progress is the key word. We are finding our way forward, learning as we go, letting God lead us through these green-again pastures.
