Again, not all from the 16th but that is when I started working on this page...
So I am a bit perturbed, my normal camera has had an issue with its battery lately so I used a temp camera, unfortunately it sucked. All of the action shots of my brother and his crew putting down my concrete are all garbage. I have before and after only unfortunately.
Well first major project completed. Concrete in pole barn is in place, plus I set up all of the doors with good locks so the place is secure (well unless someone peeled back the steel siding I guess...). I am quite thrilled because realistically, this was done with less than two weeks worth of work, just spread out trying to get the time together due to other demands on my time. Thanks to one of the neighbors for taking most of the horse stall stuff out and thanks to my brother for helping prep the floor for concrete. Thanks to Mike and his crew for putting the concrete down and finishing it, it is amazing watching skilled guys doing something like that. That is not easy work as I was trying to help. I am glad I am don't do that for a living. :)
I expect most all of the projects to go sort of like this, crashing on hard work as fast as possible with slight breaks in between. Overall though, nothing is going to be sitting around too long, getting this stuff done is too important to me. I don't care what I have to hurt on myself to get this all done. <eg> I want this place to be a perfect home that just screams out to those I care about "sit down, put your feet up, and smile because you are home". (:
Here are some before and after shots of the pole barn when I was getting the final prep for concrete. Initially I thought the rat walls were supposed to be 24" deep and 10" wide. My brother called me and said no, 18x8 about 4 hours after I called him so I dug a good 15 feet worth of 24x10... The sand fill put down for the pole barn when they built it was about 8 inches deep, then I hit the clay native to the area and got to dig through 16 inches of that... Joy! But you know, it is hard work for a good cause and I just bite down and do it.
The two kids are my first two nephews Kaelan (in red) and Michael who are the sons of my brother Mike. Michael hit 16 this summer... How fast they grow up, I remember tossing him up to the ceiling and catching him and pushing him around the floor when he sat in a shoe box. Kaelan is digging up any dirt that fell into the rat walls that were dug, Michael is drilling holes in the pre-existing concrete pad for rebar to pin the new concrete together with the old.
My brother Mike (in green) and Jesse.
The new home for the pond pump. The pipe coming up from the ground is at a weird angle and a single 45 bend didn't straighten it out so it has a little bit of pressure applied for some more bend. The bungy chords are temporary. I have the mounting brackets now, picked them up at Home Depot this evening, just have to install the water filter and them. I was quite proud when my brother who is really great with plumbing looked at my plumbing work and said it looked really good. I should hope so, he taught me a ton when I worked on my last house as we replaced all of the plumbing in that as well. I wish I could have put it closer to the wall but the way the pipe was coming up from the ground at an angle I didn't have the chance. It will make the wall a little more of a challenge to finish but I am up to it. :)
You will note a small little chip of concrete broken off the pad just to the right of the piece of rebar. My brother chewed me out for missing the rebar when hammering it in with the back end of an axe (no sledge was available) and chipping the pad so he took the axe from me so he could finish the other rebars.
Well then he hit the pad and broke a MUCH larger piece off of the pad than I did... LOL.
Everything is all ready for concrete... Let's wrap it up! Only like 2 hours spent by these guys as most everything else was already done.
You can see all of the stuff jammed onto the old concrete pad for holding. Note my nice cool 2-stage compressor. That will be used for air tools and paint guns and all sorts of stuff, it will be the source of much fun.
The rat wall to China... That thing just may have swallowed a whole yard of concrete... To put that into perspective, it took just under 19-20 yards of concrete to do the whole floor...
And voila, magically, concrete floor... It is great with how much better it looks and especially smells... I am going to let it cure for 30 days and then get the industrial epoxy and paint it with that so that it is well sealed against any kind of damage, etc. I love the look of that stuff on the floors I have seen. We will put the saw cuts into it Monday night for expansion cracking.
If you were confused by the 4" PVC that was around the 1" PVC on the pond pump in the previous pics, you can now see and understand why with this pic below. The 4" protected the 1" from the concrete.
We had a little concrete left over at the end so we formed up this little "porch" off the side of the pole barn by the "person door". My brother is serious about concrete, that little pad has steel grate and "fibers" and special strengthening chemicals in it just like the main floor to make it extra strong. That pad will likely outlive me.
Well pole barn set up with major work needed there to move in, now moving onto working on basement to get it ready. Initial projects lined up for the basement
Tear down everything built in a half-ass way
Frame up walls for basic structure of basement
Build out home office so I can work
Set up room for Chinchillas to live in until Garage is built and their room is built in there for them.
Replumb the water supply from wall inlet from well all the way to water softener. Mike is very picky about plumbing and he saw how it was done and said "This all has to be fixed...". It isn't what one could normally say is bad, but it definitely isn't as good as what Mike and I can do with it. Plus I want to move the hot water heater, pressure tank, filters, and water softener as they are spread out all over the place wasting quite a bit of space.
Set up heat exchanger on furnace and water heater for a central burner (outside wood burner) to help cut down on propane costs.
This is the going to be the room the chinchillas will live in until I have a garage and they have a room in it built for them. I thought about ripping out the big desk but figure it will be good to store the chinchilla pet stuff for now.
This shelf is now ripped out. I need to patch those holes in the wall. I actually like doing drywall patching and taping and mudding, I have fun with it. It is almost artlike in that it has to be perfect or the wall looks bad.
This is the backside of that wall of the chin's room, note the odd contraption there that used to hold a computer (the top is already off and under the stairwell), the holes were for the monitor and front of the PC.... Yeah didn't like it, all gone now... From the red columns right will be the home office. The main square area is only about 11x11 but there is a 6x7 hall that will be there as well to open it up a little. But anyway, I truly don't spend much time in the home office, I spent most of the time roaming around with laptops and wireless. Once the chin's move out to the garage, I may open up the office to include there 9x10 room as well. Who knows what will happen in six months let alone a year or so.
Another slightly different angle view. I will wall it all in to separate from the furnace room that will be built.
I tore out some shelving by the furnace as well, I hated how this space was being used. Plus there are a bunch of goofy braces in place that just don't look right and needed to be cleaned up. The shelving to the left of the furnace there is now gone (pics below). The shelves just behind the furnace are still there, I might be able to use that for the heat exchanger, I have to find out. And also the shelves to the right of the furnace is still in place.
Interesting bracing techniques.
This area (about 8x10) will be given back to the main room on the other side of the wall. I see a pool table taking up part of that space in the future...
Storage area opposite the water systems, I need to clean this up but will be interesting with the waste water plumbing all going through there. I think this will remain as storage area, just "tightened" up.
Water systems. Note the pressure tank is pretty small, I am considering something with about a 70 gallon capacity so you will have no clue the water is coming from a well. Also looking into whole house reverse osmosis systems. My agent told me the house had a whole house R-O system, but I later found out he didn't know what he was talking about. Water heater is old and I want to get it replaced and hooked to a central boiler. Another alternative is to look into changing to a smaller tank front ended by a heat exchanger from the central boiler and a tankless water heater. Then in the winter when the boiler is running, I turn off the the tankless and the smaller tank and let the heat exchanger handle it. I need to research that a little more though.
Why is the pressure tank and the water softener over on that wall instead of over next to the water heater? Also note the plastic line coming in from the well... We are checking into switching that over to copper and setting it up nice and clean.
Why isn't that water heater all the way over by the wall where it is vented????
Another angle, just tons of wasted space. I see that stuff all moved to that back wall and then a wall put up to separate that stuff from the rest of the basement. Actually something with a 5-6 inch lip on the door that is water proof so if something bad happens like the sump fails or whatever in there with any of the water systems, the water stays in the room.
