All of my photo memories are reminding me that it’s been 2 years…2 years since we survived one of the hardest parts of our building process. Site prep is one thing, cutting trees and burning brush…but excavation, plumbing water/electrical - all of that part takes A LOT of brain power and manual labor. The best word to describe October 2022 was grueling: extremely tiring and demanding…but guess what? We made it through and learned a whole lot along the way.

This post will cover everything from:

digging & pouring footers
block foundation
trenching water, power & under slab plumbing
rock slinging
vapor barrier/foam and in-floor heat
and finally concrete.

I promise to include a lot of photos and time lapse videos to keep your attention…honestly I have to throw a bone to the men on my subscribers list, they sat through “How to Decor for Fall”; so this is for them…And you ladies might find it interesting as well.

SEPT 23-28: Digging & Pouring Footers

There was a lot going on leading up to digging footers so it felt like a real hurdle getting to this point. We rented a mini-excavator and got to work. Another time of Carl making things look easy…turns out I don’t love being the grade checker, talk about boooorrrrrinnnggg. I also was tasked with cutting all of the roots out of the trench, oh what fun! As he was digging the footer trenches, his buddies were on duty to move dirt. We learned how to tie rebar and cut grade sticks (so our concrete was 100% level). September 28th, we had 3 (9yard) trucks deliver concrete. It was glorious.

P.S. Thankful for knowing someone who owns a laser transit, we wouldn’t have made it through this project without it. You know who you are ;) And I think we had it for nearly 2 years. I’m not proud.

Rebar

If you’ve ever tied rebar, you know what kind of effort it is…I believe this was my first and last experience.

OCT 3rd: Block Foundation

Thank goodness for great friends and connections. Our buddy Corey saved the day again with his connection to Jason (the block layer). Those guys didn’t get started until about 10am - they were there early but things happened and delayed our sand and 6” corner blocks. It’s always something.

They still managed to finish by 4p.m.; they didn’t mess around.

*See that top corner....those 4 blocks (6" corners) were the delay for finishing that top course*

OCT 7th-10th: Trenching Water, Power, and Under Slab

We rented a trencher for the weekend to trench all.the.things. Snaking the water and power trenches through the woods was the fun part haha! They had to be far enough apart to not push dirt in the other trench when going on the second pass. The trencher gave us an error code on Sunday when we couldn’t call in for help; it seemed like the end of the world at the time. It was low on oil with a sensitive sensor. We gave some oil, a couple hours wait and a good cussing and it worked! There’s nothing worse than being on a timeline with machinery and it failing you. You can imagine the roots and rocks we hit…it was well worth the rent.

The second hurdle was getting that heavy piece of machinery inside the foundation…we weren’t about to hand dig all of the plumbing trenches. Thank goodness for a drop trailer and an engineer…we got it figured out.

Oct 13th - 14th: Under Slab Plumbing…after dark

We laid out all of the plumbing with the help of our friend, Pat. He’s a real jack of all trades…pretty much master of all, in our book. He and Carl work well together…bouncing ideas back and forth. We were even finishing up plumbing in the dark (again, on a deadline). I don’t recommend it, but we were so close to finishing we pushed on.

I was in charge of filling in trenches with sand…and you can’t tamp it in too hard because you’ll mess up the fall on your pipes. It’s a delicate process. Hats off to all the plumbers out there.

There's a lot going on in this corner of the house: Power in, Water in, Toilet, Drains, Vents. It took some brain power - - - Carl & Pat.

Working through the Master bathroom & exterior cleanout. Just looking at this causes me anxiety, we were really under the wire at this point.

Oct 15th - Rock Slinging

I told you we were under the wire, the rock slinger was coming on Saturday. He slung 4 loads of 11’s and it was the coolest; I’d never laid eyes on a rock slinger before. This driver/operator, Josh, made it look VERY easy. Slinging rock throughout our entire slab all with a double joy-stick controller. Check it out.

Oct 21st - 23rd: Vapor Barrier/Foam & In-Floor Heat

I’m trying really hard not to bore you to tears with all of this detail…I warned you this would be a BIG post, full of pictures and content. With the rock slung it was time to compact the 11’s, lay out hot/cold pex to each sink/toilet, and then cover it all with a vapor barrier. I want to say we used 6mil but I could be wrong, that was 2 years ago.

We bought 2” foam from The Plywood King (I know the name makes no sense to me) - It was a real B*tch to lay out & tape. There was just enough wind to annoy you. We taped the cracks for added support.

Half way finished at this point - Look at the beautiful fall colors in the background

Radiantec Company - In-Floor Heat

Radiantec is a company out of Vermont, we actually found them on YouTube when we were learning about in-floor heat. They mapped the floor plan for us and talked through all of the options; they were VERY helpful. Everything was delivered on one pallet and labeled appropriately.

We had 11 total loops to do…four for the house and seven in the shop. We wanted the control of two separate climate zones. Check out a few pictures here…including the borrow pex stapler to hold those loops down. We would have been lost without that thing. By loop 11, we had things all figured out.

FUN FACT: I lost my mind on Loop 9. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to unwind Pex before, it’s very similar to trying to wind up a pressurized air compressor hose, it’s not easy…and very quickly you’ll find yourself with a pig tail corkscrew that you can’t get out. I ugly cried. It was fun. haha!

When we were all finished, we pressurized the lines with 25 lbs of air and enjoyed a celebratory beer.

Nov 2nd: And Finally Concrete

The concrete guys showed up at 5:30a.m. or so I heard, you know I wasn’t out there at that hour. They had flood lights on that lit up the whole forest! The first concrete truck arrived at daylight…they had a pump truck all setup to pump concrete to the far side of the slab. 48’ x 64’ with a 12’ lean to and a small porch off the front…it was a LOT of concrete.

I told you...those lights lit up the world.

You can see the pump truck with the long arm to the right of this picture...and that flood light was BRIGHTER than it looks here.

By 3PM the concrete looked like this…it was beautiful. (below)

Oct 3rd: We had the concrete cutter there. I was meeting him at the place by myself, I didn’t know that I’d be laying out stress cut lines and pushing the vacuum alongside of the cutter. It didn’t take long and he was a very patient and precise cutter.

Takeaway:

If you learned one thing from this ramble of post - hear this: You can do anything you put your mind to…And even when you think you can’t go on, and you’re about to die from exhaustion somehow you will find the strength to push forward. We’ve never dug and poured footers, plumbed a whole house, trenched water & power, laid out in-floor heating…none of it. So, remember this…push yourself, try new things, cry when you need to, but keep going forward and keep learning.

How We Built Our Home & Made Our Dreams A Reality | Part 2