Project Homestead - Part 3 - Filling the Hole with Cats!

The concrete crew was on site August 24, 2011 setting forms for the foundation footings.  Haylie, Zander and myself took a walk up to the job site (did I mention, its 1/4 mile from our apartment?) to take a look that night and our cat walked along to check things out. The cat (Sam or Bocephus depending on whether Haylie tells your or I do) just jumped right down in the hole and walked around. At one point, he even laid down and rested a bit.

Since that day, the cat has continued to follow us to the job site and I've even found him already there several times when I've gone over in the evenings. Moving likely won't be a problem for him.

The walls could have gone up a few days after the footings were poured but, that's when we hit our second setback.  The concrete crew was busy on other projects and left us hanging for three weeks.  UGH!!  Three weeks in mid summer wouldn't have been too bad but in the fall, it meant there were pushing us into cold weather and possible snow. I was NOT pleased about that.

We had actual basement walls on September 16th, 2011.  For the most part, the concrete footings and walls turned out well.  There's one second of garage wall that sagged a bit though the framers were able to shim the floor truss at that point to make up for it.  There's also one window that's not placed correctly.  The laundry room window is only three feet tall (the other basement windows are four feet tall) to allow for washing machine against the wall. Unfortunately, the concrete crew set that window even with other windows at the BOTTOM rather than even at the TOP.  The owner of the company said he'll give me some keystone blocks to use when building the retaining walls at my basement door and, though I'll ALWAYS thing that window is dumb, I'm going to go with it.

We've since also found that the north wall or the garage sagged a bit - the framing crew was able compensate.  The concrete crew also neglected to offset the anchor bolts correctly on that same wall for the section where garage/house wall becomes garage/outside wall. That wouldn't be an issue if the anchor strap were placed to line up with the bolts.  There are ways to frame around it but its still annoying.

LESSONS LEARNED:
1) If the contractor isn't there and moving forward when you expected, call right then and ask what the hold up is. Waiting to see if they'll show up just kills your project timeline.
2) Check everything yourself regardless of how experience the crew is. That low window is going to bug me forever.
3) Next time, I'm using the ICS foam block concrete forms. Having not seen the entire foundation process before, I didn't trust myself to get it right but having seen the process, I'd feel comfortable doing it myself.