11 Acre Wood Blog

While some of us were out at 5:30am watching…..

….others were taking advantage of a few more minutes of sleep. J 

The walls start to be filled up.

The tall pumper truck.

It takes a firm grip and steady arm with all that concrete gushing out.

Chillin’.

The pipes were put in.

Checkin’ things out.

Waitin’ for the next truck to arrive. I think it took 5 loads in all.

Eman.

Securing J-bolts for the porch.

Ground view.

Art.

Keeping everything hosed off.

The crane controller.

The last pour.

Close up.

Hosing off the ‘splatters’. 

Now this week the framing crew is here putting up all the basement walls and hanging the floor joist. 

Yesterday (Wednesday) I was gone most of the day in town with Daddy. The workers came early and got the rest of the prep work done to be ready for the pour. Someone said they left mid-morning to go get the corner pieces (6 hour round trip). Daddy and I picked up some pipe on the way home that needed to be put in the walls before the pour. Wall penetrations for utilities. 

2×4′s to keep the walls straight during the pour. 

Adding more rebar.

Sunset over the ridge.

Nehemiah’s embarrassed ‘you caught me’ look.

Hangers for the floor joist. 

A look down the wall.

Hmmmm….what a diet. LOL!

Inside the foam blocks.

Making decisions.

Marking for the pipes.

Nice and neat.

Ready for a new day.

Momma found a really good deal on this wall decor kit and she and I found time to put it up the other day. It was pretty easy and we are really enjoying it.

Rebekah did a beautiful job on these birthday packages using tissue paper. So, I thought I’d share for y’all to see. 

Have to be creative because all our wrapping paper and such is in storage. 

Have any of y’all found creative ways to decorate lately?

More foam needed.

Lotsa rebar.

Supports.

“Walkin’ the plank.” J 

Framing for doors.

Piles…..

Noah went and got a load of sand this morning to put under the pool. It’s so rocky that we were afraid one was going to poke through the bottom.

Spreading and leveling it.

Nice little circle.

Art.

It’s getting’ harder and harder to get pictures with the walls getting higher and higher. I had to resort to standing up on a dirt mound. 

Custom fitting.

Workin’ up high.

Cutting rebar for a wall.

Stair steps.

Big building blocks.

Cutting to the right size.

On a mission.

The finished height for the first pour. The walls are 10 or so feet tall to be able to put in the flooring. The ceiling will be 9 feet. They ran out of corner pieces today, so tomorrow they’ll finish getting ready for the pour and then go pick up some more corner pieces. 

Holders for the J bolts that will be used to attach the back porch floor.

Momma got this pool the other day and Bekah and the boys set it up yesterday. Since the pond is in full sun until 7pm and we’re all so fair skinned, hopefully the pool will allow us to cool off in the middle of the day.

Getting taller.

Putting rebar in the walls for support.

The frame for a window.

They got the walls up 6 feet yesterday. Looking more and more like a house….

Well, we move on to the afternoon happenings of yesterday. Momma, Bekah and Nehemiah had gone into town for the afternoon to run errands and for dentist appointments. The rest of us here were eating lunch when Noah got a call from the truck driver who was delivering the foam blocks. Noah had to meet him at the end of the driveway in twenty minutes, so he gobbled down his lunch and I made phone calls for him. He then called to see where the ICF guy (Mr. Sheldon) was. He was about an hour and a half away at that time. 

If anyone’s been up our 1/2 mile driveway, they’d know why we thought it would probably be best to just shuttle the foam blocks back with our trucks and trailers. Well, when the semi-truck driver arrived, Noah brought him back in the golfcart to see where the house site was. Then they went back to the end of the driveway. When I talked to Noah on the phone later, he said that the driver thought he could make it up the driveway. “Okay…” I said, not really thinking it was going to work too well.

Next thing I heard from Noah (about an hour later), he said the semi was stuck on the turn up the first hill (Roberts, you know the spot J). Noah said the driver came up to him and said, “You want the bad or worst news first?” Noah said, “Let me guess, the bad news is that you can’t get up the hill and the worst news is that you can’t back out the driveway.” “That pretty much sums it up.” he replied. So when I got off the phone with Noah, the driver was just attempting to make it up the hill around the turn again without jackknifing. 

Finally, it made it up to the shop (two hours later), but couldn’t quite make it around a curve to the house site, so Noah had to pull out the chainsaw. Meanwhile, Mr. Phillip and his crew were finishing up and getting ready to head out for the day. But where the semi was stuck, was blocking their way out. Noah told me to tell them the other long about way they could get out, but then the driver was able to back up a little to barely let them out. Once their trucks had filed out, he had to pull forward a little because he was blocking the drive with the back of his truck. Complications…. J So they were able to head out with instructions for us to keep the slab hosed down for the rest of the day.

Noah had to stop working because the chainsaw ran out of gas. Next he had to go hunt up a gas can to refill it. Then when he went to use it again, the cord got stuck out. So the red chainsaw had to be pulled out, oiled and filled with gas. Finally when Noah was ready to get back to work, the truck driver came up and said he had just been able to squeeze by, so the tree wouldn’t need to be taken down. Well, at least now we have a chainsaw ready to go. J

The ICF guys had not arrived when the truck was ready to be unloaded. The driver had been very nice, but he was hot and ready to go. So Noah brought ladders and we started the unloading. We tried to be careful with the Styrofoam. It took us about 12 minutes to unload six blocks. Then up drove Mr. Sheldon and one of his workers, Travis, who pulled a ramp out of their trailer, set it on the back of the semi, and started whipping the blocks out. We just kinda stepped back and chuckled watching them in amazement. Since they do this all the time, they knew how to much they could bang around and handle the foam. We didn’t…seems like we were overly careful. LOL! Mr. Sheldon and Travis had the whole semi unloaded in 15 minutes!

The next issue was getting the semi back out the driveway. The driver said he thought he could make it out, except for the first turn where a tree needed to come down. Mr. Tad’s excavator was still here from digging the basement and so Mr. Tad kindly sent over one of his workers to take down the tree for us. That was a huge blessing, otherwise we’d been needing to get back out our  (now well-oiled) chainsaw. J

Here are the pictures from the day that probably explain things better than my writing:

Moving everything out of the way so he can make the turn.

“This is crazy!”

Foam blocks.

Ethan was the official “slab wetter” for the afternoon-which was just about a fulltime job with the hot sun.

In come the reinforcements. 

Dust.

Can ya tell he’s experienced?

Halfway done.

The view from the shop of the huge semi.

“Man it’s hot!” Everyone was dripping puddles of sweat. Inside, our thermometer read 92 degrees with 87 percent humidity. Outside it was in the upper 90′s, but felt tons warmer than that!

On it’s way out. 

Decisions……

Tan little man.

“Which tree needs to go?”

Watching the “show”. LOL!

Unloading their trailer to be ready to start first thing Monday morning on the walls.

So, today the walls are starting to go up. Mr. Sheldon, Travis and one other guy, Allen, are here for the week to get the basement walls done. We just finished lunch and now they headed back out to work and Noah is out working with them as well and hopefully getting to learn some about the process. 

Momma’s been doing a great job pricing and finding good deals on windows and doors recently. I made bread this morning and washed eggs. Little boys, as always, are covered head to foot in sweaty dirt. Bekah and Grace are busy around the house and life continues on in the Sanders family……..

Thursday morning (was that really only yesterday?) Mr. Phillip and his crew came, in the somewhat coolness of our June mornings, to start pouring the slab. I was talking with his daughter later in the day and she said they were all related to the workers there except one. Seems to be that way a lot around here. Everybody is someone’s cousin, brother, uncle, sister-in-law, etc…. J You can tell they have fun workin’ together though.

One last pour.

View from above.

Lookin’ nice.

Adding a little more to a low spot.

Little watchers.

After lunch they used two trowel machines to smooth the surface.

Having to keep it sprayed down.

The end of last week (11th &12th) the footers were framed up and poured.

Mr. Phillip, our neighbor, has done a great job so far for us.

The next day gravel was dumped and spread around.

The house site in relation to the shop.

Tuesday Capers and Curtis came and did the basement plumbing for us.

Hot sun!!!!

On the Tuesday before his birthday (the 13th), Daddy had surgery for a torn rotator cuff. His shoulder’s been bothering him for over a year now, but we wanted to explore other options and have surgery as a last result. He’s done some physical therapy and such, but the pain had only gotten worse. To the point he couldn’t even sleep at night. So, he went ahead and scheduled surgery, which just happened to be around his birthday. When they did surgery, the doctor found that he also had two labral tear which hadn’t shown up in the MRI, which accounts for the pain he was having. Thank the Lord that the doctor was able to repair everything. You can keep Daddy in your prayers though, for it’s a long recovery and there is sooo much going on in this season of our lives, not to mention building a house. J  

Well, before all this had been scheduled, Daddy was so sweet and had said we girls and Momma could go away on his birthday for a weekend getaway with cousins (more on that later). If it hadn’t been that it was the only time that would work for everyone’s schedules, we wouldn’t have wanted to do it that weekend. 

Now, with all that background behind us, here are some pictures from a little celebration we did the night before his birthday:

Specialty banana pudding.

A storm was blowing in, so we were all outside enjoying the cool breeze.

Daddy.

Noah and smelly dog!

Right now our favorite dish is combining any vegetables we have on hand (squash, onions, sweet potatoes, peppers, carrots, zucchini, red potatoes, broccoli, minced garlic, beets, etc…) in a pan with some coconut oil, add some meat and roast it in the oven. It’s such an easy one dish meal that everyone loves. Even though we’ve never liked beets before, when everything’s mixed up, there are so many different flavors, that you can’t always tell the vegetables apart. 

One of the restaurants we supply gave us a hunk of their smoked bacon a couple weeks ago. Bekah sliced it up and fried it, to add to the vegetable dish that night. It was so good, especially since we used the bacon grease instead of the coconut oil. There are unlimited variations that could be done with this dish. 

What is your favorite way to use your vegetables?