Here's a video we took Sunday night under the house because sometimes pictures just aren't enough. The house is supposed to be lowered tomorrow (finally!)

With the help of some paid labor, a pump truck and another batch of concrete, Craig set the stem walls in the pouring rain (yep, love Seattle!) last Wednesday. I conveniently showed up when everything was done and treated Craig to the hamburger equivalent of the "Ol' 96er" and a Maritime Pale Ale down at Zak's burger joint.

This weekend, also mostly in the rain, we started to backfill the outside and under the house and began to work on the center beam that runs under the house (more on that later).

Craig gets the MVP award this week for getting up at 4:30am on Wednesday to finishing prepping the forms and getting half a days work in before working on our house. He also gets props for working pushing through his fatigue this weekend. He played double duty hanging out with the Michigan guys in town for the weekend into the wee hours and then getting up early to do manual labor all weekend! He even fit in a cat nap in quite a creative set-up...



Here's our first glimpse at the completed stem walls - not too shabby!

We passed our inspection (thank God). Craig also found a note on our door today which read:
"Neighbor, please move all sawing and other loud tools inside after 8pm as some of us need to get up early."

While I'm not ready to rescind on my comment that all our neighbors are really nice, it's a little perturbing for a couple reasons:

A. The person didn't sign their name (ahem - rather wussy move)
B. Last night was the first time we were ever loud past 8:30pm and the law states that you can be loud until 10pm.

The funny thing is, with half the doors off the house (and half the floor) working inside doesn't exactly stifle the noise. Oh well.

Tomorrow is our next inspection which we need to pass before we can pour the stems walls. After tonight we're about 90% (95% according to Craig) ready for the inspection and hoping will pass anyway. We have just under 10 days left before we leave for Alaska so it's really crunch time now. Plus, Wednesday equals 30 days that the house has been in the air which also means we get to start paying, daily, to keep it up there. If we actually get everything done this will be the best vacation ever. If we don't, we'll just be a couple hundred dollars poorer.

The pictures below show what the stem walls look like pre-concrete. The boxes that you'll see are for the vents. Since the underneath part of the house is pretty much enclosed now, Craig had a lot of fun climbing in and out of the tiny space by the steel beams to screw in the remaining pieces.

Random piles of stuff in our backyard

that about sums it up.

Dirty, Tired and Sunburned

Too tired to write much today. It was a long weekend, 10 hours yesterday and 10.5 hours today. We're starting to really realize just how much we need to get done in the next two weeks before we leave for vacation. We weren't too tired, though for a celebratory toast at the end of the day (pictured above). At least we're still smiling (an talking). Current mantra: "This is the worst part. It must get easier from here."

Inspection - check! Concrete - check!

Monday night was a very satisfying night as we put in the final rebar and got everything ready for our inspection on Tuesday. We really wanted to be there for the inspection, but the inspector never returned any calls to say when he was coming, convincing us that the city had scammed us and we'd have to wait another two days before we could do anything. On a whim, though, Craig stopped by the house and sure enough, there was the inspection approval taped to a piece of lumber. So far so good! Then yesterday morning, also kind of on a whim, Craig called the concrete company to see if they had any cancellations and could deliver our concrete and amazingly enough they did and sent a truck over around 2:30pm. I think our house made the driver's day. He rolled up with a "I'd rather be golfing" sign around his license plate and continued to chuckle at us the whole time we worked our butts off to pour and smooth the concrete. The truck in the picture is exactly like the one that pulled on to our front lawn. Putting in the concrete was tough work. It didn't look at all how I expected, it had huge rocks in it and was not that easy to spread (imagine that right?). Anyway, the flat fee for the concrete delivery included 40 mins to unload the truck. It took us about 2 hours so we ended up with tons of overtime fees but at least with the satisfaction of having that part done. I wish we had some action shots, but I didn't want concrete all over the camera and it was a little too intense to take a 'camera break.' So here are some after shots. After I took these we went to happy hour at a local bar -- and were very happy. Today is Craig's 25th birthday and I wish I could buy him some laborers but they're too expensive. He may have to settle with an ice cream cone instead.

Rugby Loyalty = Free Laborers for a Day

This weekend our friend Wes who played rugby with Craig at Michigan was in town for the weekend. What better way for him to enjoy Seattle then to help with our house? Along with Wes, two other rugby players, Ben and Alex Becker, came down from Anacortes. We treated them to a night on the town on Friday and in return, they helped out on Saturday along with two of our other local friends, Murph and JT. It's was super fantastic to actually have help for the first time and these guys got tons done. The most important of which was moving the 3000lb rock that was sitting right under our house in the way of the footings. You can see from the pictures below that it took the strength of three (burly) guys to lift this damn rock even an inch, but finally they were able to move it (while I stood around and took the pictures). In addition to the rock spectacle, Wes and Ben did a lot of rebar work, Alex helped cut down our trees and Murph and JT finished demoing our ceiling in the main room.
Today, Craig and I finished the forms and made it through a big chunk of the rebar. Another 10hour day...more pictures tomorrow.