We headed down as a family on Sunday night to help finish the foundation work and start getting walls up.  The floor had been poured, but we weren’t quite sure what it was going to look like.  Unfortunately the concrete mix had too much retardant added to it, so it took hours and hours to begin setting up.  This meant that the guys couldn’t get it smoothed out like it should be.  What we have is a sound foundation and floor, but it is not real pretty and won’t be good for trying to finish with stains or paint.  Good thing we like tile and there are lots of options there.

On Monday morning Josh and Barry and another guy named Ron pulled the forms off of the foundation and applied 2 inch foam insulation.  Toward the end of the day the bulldozer flattened out the area surrounding the house.

 

Tuesday we worked as a family to assemble a big work tent we got from Costco.  It gives a little break from the heat and a place to store tools and equipment (I hope it doesn’t blow away).

We had some time to relax around camp in the afternoon.  A builder named Bob from La Veta would be over in the morning to help us get the walls up.

 

On Wednesday morning Barry came back to help with the walls too, although we hadn’t expected him to throw down like he did.  With the two pro builders, Josh and me, we got all 27 walls properly placed on the foundation, screwed together and bolted down in a few places.  It was an amazing amount of progress to see happen in one day.  It would not have been possible for Josh and I to do this by ourselves.  I actually thought it would be, but it took all three of the guys to lift them and that was with relatively little wind.  Those walls are heavy and our pro helpers had a lot of tricks up their sleeves for leveling, bracing and repositioning these walls.

 

I made a video tour of the house the next morning, watch Walls Day One.

By Thursday we were feeling the strain of multiple days camping and working all day long.  I took the kids to Westcliffe where we fueled up.  The Westcliffe Inn offers a shower in a private bathroom for $10 Monday – Thursday.  We got cleaned up, bought some more ice, drinks, sandwiches, supplies at Ace and headed back with an ice cream sandwich for Josh.

While we were out, Josh had been drilling holes into concrete.  And drilling some more holes into concrete.  Then drilling some more holes to find some holes that would actually be 10″ deep without hitting rebar so we could attach the walls to their foundation.  After we had enough holes at the right depth with filled them with epoxy then inserted the rods with washers or tension tie connectors.

Friday morning brought harsh wind and colder temperatures.  It was a good thing we weren’t trying to get walls up this day, it would have been a non starter.  Instead, we placed screws between each wall panel then decided that was good for a day or two and packed up to head home.

Next steps are to get the wall cable in place, top plates on, then we prepare to raise the ring by building a platform and getting all our scaffolding up, then we raise the ring and put in the rafters.  There is no reason to think it won’t go as smoothly as the walls did.

But first, a little rest.