Ready to Be Lowered

It's been a while since I've updated because, well, there hasn't been much to update.  The foundation work took a little longer than expected, but you'll have that when the house is already built and in place above the work area.  You can't use the same equipment, and work slows every hour or so because you hit your head on YET ANOTHER &*^*&%^ THING! 

We thought we were ready for the movers a couple weeks ago, but Jerry (Expert House Movers) came out and wanted us to extend more walls and get the fireplace footers a little closer to the finished height.   There was acutually one place we hoped to build after the cribbing was gone, but Jerry needed more support for the house to land on so the footer was extended through the cribbing stack.  The block mason then had to start and stop the wall around the cribbing.



One of the difficult things the mason has to keep in mind is that the house's sill beams need to be able to land on the top wall of the foundation, but there needs to be enough room below the I-beams for that to happen.



As you can see from the photos above and below, the walls are notched basically so the beams have room to come out once the perimeter of the house sets down.



The trickiest part is going to be inserting our permanent steel beams as the movers' remove theirs.  Oh, and remember, not all of our walls are up so we don't always have a way to support both ends of the steel beams!  For instance, in the picture below the opening you see can't be completed because the cribbing to the right blocks another footer. 


We've got it now, though (I hope).  All of the building steel is onsite after a very difficult time with the steel vendor and weather permitting the Expert House Movers are back Wednesday 5/17 to set her down.  There will be a huge weight off of our backs when she's down, and then even more so when the holes are filled in and we're completely off temporary supports.  I'll keep you posted.