Again the last couple days have been super fun with very exciting progress! The weather DID cooperate and my concrete footing has been poured successfully. I was so happy Joel was able to come over and help me get the concrete done correctly; he has lots of experience. And Joel was so happy too! Not because he was privileged to do heavy manual labor with me, but because he was hired yesterday as an intern in Walker Minnesota working in Geographic Information Systems which is his college major. Way to go Joel, I hope you enjoy your new career!
I got so much done yesterday, it's hard to believe I had a late start. I just wasn't feeling like having an early morning, so I took it easy and didn't arrive at my lot till 10:45. That was cutting it a bit close because I had an 11 o'clock appointment with an engineer to have my electrical line location staked out. On my way up, the engineer called wondering if I'd be early, as he was, and he had all the work done by the time I arrived. He staked the proposed wire routing according to a drawing I had submitted with my application. When I climbed down from my truck, Kevin the engineer looked from my license plate up to me and said, "Jon, I hope you didn't drive all the way from California to meet me here this morning!" My laughter was a great way to start work for the day! Especially because I was a bit freaked out to commit to where my power source will be located when I still haven't figured out exactly how my cabin will be laid out. Kevin helped me make a decision and even explained to me how to cheat the system a bit. If I put my electrical meter on a post now, he says I can locate it several feet beyond where I'll put it on the house after the pit gets filled in and the extra wire they install will be enough to reach my house. So it's going where it's going, and I'll make it work with my floor plan (or I'll make my floor plan work with it, not sure which, ha!).
So Kevin took off pretty quickly, but not before Randy showed up again with a dump truck full of dirt and gravel for my driveway. Seeing Randy work got me thinking about how it's part of the common way here for families to work together their whole lives. Randy learned the business from his father and when I watch him work the dirt, it shows that he's been at it his whole life. Now Randy is trying to pass Vojak Excavation, Becida, MN along to his son who is really good at it too, but apparently reluctant. I find it to be a bit of a shame that he doesn't embrace the good fortune of having a business handed to him, but then, you couldn't pay me enough to be a tractor operator. And also, I could never be a salesman, sorry Dad!
On his second dirt delivery, I told Randy I had a concrete truck scheduled to arrive in the afternoon. He replied, "Yeeah, I know that, that's why I'm here! We'll getcha a couple more loads of dirt, and then bring in the Bobcat to get 'er all buffed out before your truck arrives." I forgot I had mentioned in passing last week that this was the day I'd be pouring my footing. I forgot, but Randy didn't. He made sure the concrete truck would have a driveway that was good enough to not only get into my cabin site, but to also get out!
This is a very exciting photo for me as yesterday marked the first time I was able to drive onto my lot!
While Randy and his son made 45 yards of dirt look pretty over the next couple hours, I finished preparing the footing. I added three boards to complete the form, and then dug out the inside of the footing with a shovel to make sure it was level. The amount of concrete ordered is calculated by the width, depth, and length of the forms so if I dug down too much or not enough, we would end up with the wrong amount of concrete. I was very careful and got everything as level as I could with crude implements. It required at least an hour of digging to get it right and I felt so grateful that my body had been broken-in working in masonry the past couple weeks. If that had been my first shoveling project of the summer, I may have died. Then I employed my newly learned skill of bending and installing re-bar and again I felt gratitude. It was the first day I spent time working on my house alone and I felt so proud and empowered to be actively pursuing a dream.
Here is the finished form with my re-bar in place:
I finished the preparation with about fifteen minutes to spare for a nice little rest in the shade before the concrete truck arrived. In that short time-window, I planted the stake where my address sign post will go. Pretty soon I'll have a shiny blue sign with my very own number on it :-) Joel showed up, gave me his good news, and before we knew it, concrete was a-flowin'! The plan was to have the truck back in and use a chute to get concrete as far in as possible. Then we would fill the wheelbarrow as many times as needed to get concrete to the far reaches of my 20 by 24 ft. footing. The driver informed us we needn't work so hard and could put that shovel down unless we really badly wanted to work. He was amazing; he pulled his hulking concrete truck into three corners I wouldn't have wanted to drive a bulldozer (but then, I already admitted I wouldn't want to drive a tractor at all...) and we were able to avoid the back-breaking wheelbarrow plan entirely!
Here I am looking happy about the big progress, but spent from the hard work of it.
Here are some basement foundation pictures, concrete evidence for Dad :-)
Joel passed on a dinner invitation to me from Curt before I scrambled off to Bemidji to run some errands. As he was parting, I noticed a piece of his car hanging low trying to take some of my driveway with it. I flagged him down and his problem resulted in this grand opportunity to record my first neighbor working on their car in my driveway. I told Joel, "May you be the first of many!"
I got a bunch of stuff taken care of before joining Curt, Marion, Joel, Dustin and kids for dinner. Curt and Marion had spent three hours fishing Lake Hattie earlier in the day. In that time, they brought in their limit of twenty bluegills apiece, not counting all the little ones they threw back! Curt fried 'em up right with french fries, salad, and beans on the side. What a treat, I've never had better fish! Marion showed me her polymer clay sculpting and we talked crafts for a while. We had a nice visit, albeit short, before I headed back to Backus for the night. Now Curt and Marion will be joining Paul and Melanie for dinner tomorrow where I've been staying, so I'll get to see them again.
These next two shots are a fun pair of pics because they are both the same place at different stages of development.
In this "before" picture of my driveway, the marking stake is visible in the center and if you look closely, you can see the top of the metal culvert lying in the ditch.
The "after" shot, taken yesterday before dinner, looks like a different place, but is the same except for being a bit farther back when I took the picture.
In Bemidji yesterday, I did a bit of shopping and bought a post upon which to install my electric meter. Today I spent a good part of the morning planning my floor layout so I could decide the exact location for the meter accordingly. Though I still don't have it all figured out, bright and early Paul and I are heading up to put the post in the ground so I can hurry up and get electricity to make construction easier.
Caleb is a diligent helper and ever talkative. I'm not always sure what he's saying, but I can tell he really means it. I do understand and feel so welcome whenever I come home to his house and he shouts, "Hey, it's Jon! Jon's here, hi Jon! MOM, Jon's here! Hey Jon, hi Jon!" That's lots of fun.
Here's the meter panel once I got it all assembled. The top box is the receptacle where the electrical co-op will install my meter. The box below it is a sub panel with breakers in it so I can safely use power tools during construction. The little box on the lower right has two outlets in it with Ground Fault Circuit Interrupters on them. The sub panel and power outlets will remain as an exterior power source after construction is completed in case I ever need to have electricity outdoors. I can think of a thousand uses for that!
If all goes well, and since I've been here it pretty much has, this post will look much shorter planted three feet in the dirt at my lot tomorrow! Upon ploofreading that last sentence, I must clarify: I'm referring to the wooden post pictured above, not this blog post!
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