Basement Construction Day 1

On Friday, Nathan and Lige made it up to my lot to begin construction on the walls of my basement. Though it has been stormy from time to time, the weather was cooperative for construction. The sun shone hotly, but a nice wind picked up by afternoon. I felt really great early in the day and was surprised to find my self having thoughts like, "Maybe I could be a mason, I just needed to condition my body a bit, like I used to at the beginning of each fire season." I was less surprised about five minutes later when I thought, "Ppppft, yeah right! Are you nuts, Jon Wheeler!? I'm hungry, when's lunch?"

I quickly settled back into my role as mason's helper delivering buckets of cement and smoothing mortar joints. I joked around that I was confused about whether I was a boss or a drudge today and endured (perhaps relished) all their jokes about homeowners never knowing anything and about the work they were doing being "good enough for who it's for" etc. I told them to go ahead and make all the jokes they wanted because there was very little chance of them losing this client. Lige laughed and said he'd never gotten to insult the homeowner to their face before. We had fun going back and forth like that all day. I had one conversation that went like this:
Me: Does this joint look smooth enough?
Lige: Ungh
Me: OK
Lige: Why use all them words when a simple grunt will do? I guess I'm not feeling very conversational today.
Me: OK... You wanna talk about it?

Things were going well, and I felt really proud when they decided it was time to teach me to mix cement. It was like a pretty serious promotion. I learned the secret recipe, listened very carefully to Nathan's instructions, and repeated them back to him to make sure I understood. OK, water, cement, sand. Got it. I totally had things under control until Lige walked over to check on me, looked down into the mixer and shouted, "ADD WATER!" about four seconds before the motor bogged and the drive belt broke on the mixer. Nathan laughed and told me it was time to mix by hand. I looked sidelong for an escape route to the woods, but fortunately they had an extra belt. Unfortunately, they had only one belt and my new cement mixing privileges were rescinded at once. It's probably healthy for my ego that I'm so unskilled at something that I should be demoted.

Lige mixed for the rest of the day and no more belts broke. The guys made excellent progress getting the walls halfway done in a day. Nathan says they'll return on Monday and I expect the walls will get completed then. I'm thinking one more day after that and the slab will get poured, finishing my basement! Then I'll be ready to do construction all day every day to my heart's desire and my body's dismay. My plan is to never lift anything heavier than half a bucket of cement. Ever.

This is the first half of my basement:


This picture shows the space where my egress window will go. A window installed here big enough for people to exit the basement in case of emergency allows me to use the basement for a bedroom in the future if I wish. It will go where the blocks are missing in an inverted pyramid in the center of the wall.


"House" with "yard"



By the end of the day, I was feeling pretty tired.


In a town the size of Becida, new construction is relatively big news, especially if it's near where them people was buried. I heard a couple honks from passing cars which I took to mean, hey, we're excited for you! A few visitors including my brother Joe stopped by to see the progress. It was near the end of the day and I was so tired I forgot to get a picture of Joe and his kids. But here's proof positive his RV was on site