None of us were aware or prepared for the magnitude of the “by hand” portion of the foundation work. We began this huge under taking by stock piling a seemingly endless list of materials and tools needed to simply make liquid rock sit still long enough and strong enough to plop a house atop.
Our trusty Ford “Bruno” set to hauling load after load of rebar, 3/4 inch plywood sheets, j-bolts, cleats, mono-straps, scabs, blocks and braces, stakes and of course, my horse shoe set and snacks.
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| From The new truck pulls it's weight |
We have only weekends and my occasional solo labor during the school year as Greg (or “the right honorable captain Greg sir” as I refer to him) is head teacher all week at an elementary school.
As a result, the footing and stemwall form construction moves slow with gaps of three to seven days. This is difficult because the flow of work is interrupted and there are many hours of hauling tools and trying to remember where one might have left off last week, along with being already exhausted from our week of regular work. No matter though, most weekend mornings find us with energy and high spirits, mostly due to coffee consumption on the part of the right honorable, captain Greg sir and myself.
As the days go by, we draw closers to a foundation, which, you must admit, sounds like a pretty good way to start a house. It seems like, with that accomplished, statistically speaking, we have a wonderful chance of putting a house on it. This excites me and pushes me on. It has, is and will be a hard damn project, but it was too late to back down when I was divining for our water line and getting sawdust in my undies. Forward brave Foster-Rainwater-Martins. We are not turned away by a challenge, but embrace it with full hearts.
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| From 2010 operation foundation |
(A crappy picture for a kinda crappy day)
Vashon by Hand 