The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock

So we're putting on an addition and therefore we needed to extend the foundation of the house. If you remember that concrete slab we removed that's the same place where the new foundation now stands. We've had tons of help with this stage of the addition. The first step of course was digging for the footer.

Then we prepped the ground to pour the footer. In the month of October we had so much rain that the pour was pushed back for a couple weeks. At one point the entire footer was filled with so much water that I used a wet/dry vac with a make-shift filter to suck out all the mud water. I packed in gravel and put in rebar to prepare for the pour.

Next we poured the footer. The truck was too tall for the power line so we "safely" propped it up with a 14' 2x6. The truck got as close as possible and started pouring.

Maurice is putting the finishing touches on the footer.

After the footer dried, Maurice laid the block for the foundation.

After the block was laid, we dug out for the crawl space. And by "we" I mean, Devin and Maurice (two high schools guy from the church).

Now we're ready to start framing!

Making Progress

Thanks to some helping hands we got quite a bit done this past weekend. We are nearing the end of the demolition phase - we've extracted nearly all of the ductwork in the house and have removed the walls that are being moved. We have also torn out a substantial amount of the original knob & tube wiring, although there is still a good deal of this in the house.

Taking some steps in the right direction, the upstairs bathroom is making some progress. We are expanding the bathroom by moving a wall back about two feet. We removed the existing wall and all of the plaster on the walls and were able to frame up the new wall.

On another front, we framed in the new opening for the french doors between the living room and den. We also began work on the new closet doors in the master bedroom. A beam was also added in the basement last week to support some sagging floor joists - although Tara says that the sloping floors add to the character of the house. :)

In summary, lots of changes in one weekend. This we like!

Thanks to all who have helped so far, especially Scott C., Lyle T., Larry G., John E., and Dean C. for your help this past week/weekend.