2004-07-26 - 11:50 p.m.
Concrete Jungle
July 26/Monday
Oh boy, oh by, oh boy, OH BOY! The guys were here BEFORE 8:00 A.M.!!! A whole pile of 'em! Before I got out of bed! (OK, I know I'm pathetic, but give me a tiny break. It's summer. The summer before I go into servitude to pay for this thing we're building. And Rex didn't get up til around 9!)
So, yay! Piles of worker guys here to . . . do stuff . . . like wait. They got to unload the lumber truck that delivered the forms for the foundations and stuff. (JD was right - they do sort of look like Legos! More on this tomorrow, when they assemble it.) Then we wait for the concrete truck. JD comes in to tell us the "plan" for the week: Mon - pour footings, Tues - set up foundation forms & get inspected (if they can come then), Wed or Thurs - pour foundation, Thurs or Fri - backfill (goodbye dirt piles!!). Then we wait. We watch the guys play with JD's dog Megan, an extremely well behaved/trained german shepherd (the kind that you can put a treat on her nose and she'll wait excitedly until you tell her it's OK to have it). Eventually JD can't wait any longer and leaves, while the rest of us continue to w�a�i�t.
I see you shiver . . . with antici . . .
. . . pation!
It was expected by 10 and hadn't arrived by 10:30 but was here and gone by 12:30, so I guess it's not ALL that bad. It just felt like forever cuz the guys were ACTUALLY HERE at a NORMAL TIME and had nothing to do for over TWO AND A HALF HOURS!
Check out the ruts it made in what's left of the lawn. They're quite deep.
The truck finally arrived. The boys and I sat in the window watching. It went pretty well, no big problems.
The truck had some trouble maneuvering between the hole, dirt piles, and "garage" but it managed to stay out of the hole, which was my worry. It looked pretty close at one point but the pics don't do it justice (ie - they show that it was nowhere near falling in the hole).
The boys got all worked up when the extension chute tipped over (improperly attached) and spilled concrete on the ground. "That's wasting concrete!" - Todd loud enough for all to hear. You DON'T want to hear them talk about how much this costs and, "why don't they give us back money when they are done?" It's painful! They have no concept of money or economics so they often say things like, "I wish this only cost a penny." So do I, Rex, so do I.
The horror!
Anyway, the concrete gets poured and then smoothed over all pretty-like and then one guy "draws" an ugly line down the center of the perfectly smooth footing. I think I heard them say something about it being there so that the foundation concrete has something to "grip onto." I'm thinking that it's like sanding or scoring a smooth surface before you glue it, but a tiny little line down the middle hardly seems like it's worth it, and there's 14 pieces of re-bar laying in the grass doing nothing when they could be standing in my footings. (Never hire illegal re-bars - they are soooo lazy!) They even filled the "mystery box" with concrete. No idea what it's for.
Stupid line! Where's that re-bar?!?!?
So, all the excitement for the day was over by lunchtime. We ate and went to the beach and came home and ate again. (Oh, and Phil fixed the tractor AGAIN and "moved" the lawn, as Rex says.)
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