Saturday, June 6, 2009

We finally broke ground on the Garage/Studio.

I haven't posted in about 3 weeks since we FINALLY have gotten started on our building project. So, if I'm not at work, I usually outside playing in the dirt. On Memorial Day weekend, we rented a sod cutter to remove the turf and layed out the visqueen vapor barrior. Then Tuesday we had 20 ton of pea gravel delivered as a base for the concrete floor. The picture below is pre-gravel (that's my husband in the picture).

Last weekend we rented an auger to start the 23 holes we needed to dig. The problem is that the auger only got us a 36 inch deep, 12 inch diameter hole. We had a little over half of the holes done with the auger when my husband heard and felt his back go "pop". Now we had to return the auger on Tuesday morning and 9-10 holes to go so we called in assistance from our son-in-law. He was a tremendous help, after we finished with the auger then we needed to start widening and deepening the holes by hand. This is going to take us a little while. Just remember we are both in our mid to late 50's and doing most of this project with our own hands. To set the posts per code, we need these holes to be 52 inches deep and about 15 inches in diameter. We made decent progress last weekend but then the rain hit. Our area received 2-3 inches of rain over 2 days. I snapped this next picture with my P&S before leaving for work the next morning. You couldn't even see the holes anymore.

Since then we have been pumping water out of the holes so we can get back to digging. It looks like it will still be a couple weeks before we can get the posts in the holes and get the inspector out here and get the OK to pour the concrete floor. Once that is done, the weather shouldn't slow us down too much.

I did take a few minutes yesterday morning to relax and take a few pictures. The temperature was on the cool side so we had heavy dew and a tiny bit of frost as seen on the strawberry below.
I thought the dew drops on top of the tips of the strawberry leaves were interesting. What do you think?

The daisies are still blooming so I shot them also.

I'd better wrap this up since I have to run to town this morning and then get back to digging holes. It's not much "fun", in fact it's hard work but will be sooooooooooooooo worth it when my studio is completed.