One of the things I had the laborers take care of when it was too hot was to clear out the garages. They had been full to the ceiling of AmDeck pieces, but it was time to move them up for use on the kid's bedroom level.
This also opened up space for new material that I was expecting to arrive shortly. By the middle of the week the garage was almost cleared, except for a pile of dirt!
Here are some of the Amdeck forms now piled high in the livingroom! Still a pile of dirt here too!
The rest of the AmDeck was stacked outside on the livingroom porch and garage roof.
Speaking of dirt, we started backfilling the south side of the house. Most of the dirt that was piled behind the house and in the kitchen was moved one bucket at a time to the south side and compacted.
Here is Junior doing some compacting as Kyle shovels more dirt:
I forgot to precast one hole in the footing, so I rented a coring drill and a few hours later I had a nice clean 5" diameter hole through the 12" thick footing.
Here is the core created by the special drill:
One other hole I forgot to form before filling the wall was the 13" diameter hole for the hood vent in the kitchen. This was a big mistake, because it took the better part of a day for one man to chip it out! Lesson learned!
Once the 5" hole was drilled, the HVAC guys from Precise Air came and installed the cellar bath vent, and 2 conduits with insulated copper pipes inside that will eventually go to the condensers that will be located on the south side of the house.
Up on top, the shoring was almost finished. The "bridge" running from front to back is the form for a huge structural concrete beam that will support the entire floor above.
On Thursday the steel joists were delivered! I decided to order the rest of the joists for the house, even though they would be tough to store, so I paid the extra fee to have them forklifted up to the top floor! Here is the steel on the truck, with the giant forklift being towed behind.
The driver was able to lift the order in two groups. Each time we blocked the street while he drove up from his truck and right into the driveway ...
... then lifted the bundle to the master bedroom level.
The guys were all up there waiting and as soon as he stopped moving they cut the bundles open and unloaded one piece at a time.
Part of the order was stacked on the newly built shoring.
The steel for the roof over the master suite was put in place on the shoring, and the rest of the roof pieces were stacked right in the tower room floor!
Here is a movie of the steel delivery process:
Now that the garage was emptied and ready for clean storage, The guys built some temporary "doors".
I don't think I ever mentioned the ramp! A few weeks ago we created a ramp so that we could get to the house without climbing the crazy wood ladders! The inspectors (and my family) are thrilled with it!
Here are the front steps with the forms removed. There are not perfectly finished, but they will be covered!
On Friday we had a busy morning! The steel posts were delivered for the kitchen level. We only had time to carry them up and leave them in the livingroom.
The shoring is not finished, but it's getting close! One of my workers said that it looked like the underside of an old wooden rollercoaster!
This is the front edge of the slab looking up at the top of the stairs leading to the kid's bedroom level.
At 10:30 Jose the pumper arrived and started setting up for the pour. The plan was to backfill the kitchen wall and top off the back footing at the same time so that the crawlspace had a decent floor surface. The crawlspace is accessed through an opening hidden in the kitchen pantry show here.
The pour went well, and now there is a concrete floor! This will also be the surface that the back walls will be built on.
Since it was the Friday of a long hard week, some of the guys wanted to work only a half day, so the afternoon was a little slow, only Evan and one laborer, Tom, stayed with me.
Tom worked the rest of the afternoon on the front edge of the form, while Evan and I did some trowelling on the new slab. Evan also cleaned up the rubbish inside the construction fence at the street. Here is the slab form, looking down the stairwell from the kid's level.
Here is the tower bedroom as viewed from the middle of the kids level slab.
After work, I dropped off Evan, then came back up to the house to power wash the street. Once the street was clean I climbed up to the top of the house to reflect. I realized that I have not taken any time to stand back and look around by myself! One thing I noticed was how quiet it was, even at 5:00 in the evening. As I was walking around I heard a shuffling sound at the street, and out walked some of our future neighbors!
We both stood still contemplating each other, then they walked on by and I packed up and went home.
On Saturday, Evan came and helped me for a few hours. I really wanted to lay out some of the AmDeck on the kid's level, and it was fun having Evan there to assist!
I know I've described how easy the AmDeck installation is. Here is a little sequence Evan took of me dropping one of the blocks in place.
After less than an hour of work, we had laid out most of the floor for Evan's bedroom!
Next week I hope to finish all of the forming for the kid's level floor!
