Foundation Done

There was a whole flurry of activity this past week.  Essentially the entire foundation is now done.  After the little garage was demolished, they dug a huge hole in the backyard.  Then the foundation guys came and poured the .... "footers" I think (not 100% sure on the terminology!).  Then after those were dry, they came back and poured the foundation walls.  Crazy how fast those went up.

Here they are bringing in the forms for the foundation with the truck that had this CRAZY big crane:

And here they are setting everything up:

And of course, here is the concrete being poured (I have this in video, but I'll spare you - it's like watching paint dry):

When everything was broken down and dry, the filling up of the hole began!
Dumping Dirt into the foundation:

Jim actually took a couple of days off of work so that he could watch the foundation being put in, but the guys were so fast, it was already done before he was off. But I think he enjoyed walking around and checking things out as they were happening anyway. Here he is chatting with Mike Z, the general contractor:

But we cannot forget the water and electricity lines out to the garage!  To do that, they had to dig a trench from our house foundation.  The only weird thing is that there is a sort of 2-story gabeled bump out on the driveway side of the house.  It seems to be newer than the rest of the house, and doesn't seem to actually have a foundation itself.  The basement doesn't go out with it, and when we have looked at the "foundation wall" below it, it seems to just be bricks (which are actually loose) and hollow to the porch.  A little scary.  But I prefer to not think about it too hard.   Anyway, they were digging the trench to that part of the house...  I think they ended up getting the electric and water lines from the original basement-ed part of the house right next to it -- not really sure how that worked out - I wasn't paying enough attention.   As you can see from the video below, we ended up a little bit trapped inside the house!  We've never actually had a key for the front door (previous owner never gave us one), so it was a little bit tricky for a day or two until it got covered back up.

Digging the trench:

We are having them re-grade our lawn as part of this project.  We knew there was a slope and some bumps in it, but apparently it was 2 feet lower in the back.  And even with that giant hole and filling it back up, to get things all even, they still had to bring in FIVE truckloads of dirt!  That's right! - five truckloads!  Seems like a lot to me...  And here is a video of the dump truck (again - for the little guy that will be sad he missed out!)

Bringing in more dirt:

And the only casualty of this work is my little garden gnome - you might not be able to see him, but the sunbleached guy is in the center of this picture.  Now he is somewhere underneath the ground.

So foundation is complete, electric inspection is done, and I believe that the framing will start this week!