Dirt and First Block

Sept 7

Block finally up on the walls this week. We are still waiting for some dirt fill from Tom so we can only go window high in order to get the loader bucket over the wall into the center of the house where the fill is needed. The rough wood opening for the front door is placed however, and that begins to create a measure of what the structure might look like. I’ve told Sam of the optical illusion that construction sites provide…first the hole looks so small. As the foundation goes in it begins to look large…maybe too large. Then when the walls are in it looks small again and so on until the house is done, and if properly planned the rooms finally look just right! Sam is beginning to see this for himself!

For the first three courses we are using the 100 year old block salvaged from the horse barn that used to stand on the site. We try to waste nothing. They look handmade and are heavier than new block and a little tricky to lay as they are so irregular. We lay them with the interior face as level and straight as we can and leave the outside uneven as it will be faced with limestone and granite eventually. One block turned up with a hand print in the cement …a message to us from the maker so many years ago! I am amazed at how far the old block have stretched. The horse barn was not very large but we keep building and building and don’t seem to run out of the old block.

My back is a little better and my sciatica is slowly disappearing after a month, but when we lay block Sam lifts the buttered block into place where I set and square it. It is a system that seems to work and keep me upright.

We were negotiating on a quaint Victorian porch with gingerbread trim last week in hopes of acquiring it before demolition. The price was right and we signed the papers for it this week and now we need to spend several days dismantling it to bring it home to repair and paint during the upcoming winter months. It will be a fabulous addition to the front of the house and save us considerable effort in fabricating the gingerbread all by ourselves.

The house footprint is really beginning to show and after setting the door frame the final size of the structure is beginning to be apparent. As we move along further it will generate a bit of curiosity that we may need to deal with.

Sept 10

Dirt arrived. ..four dump truck loads. We will still need more around the house before we are done but this will pretty much fill in the foundation where the radiant heating system will be installed. This is a great relief in that if we get rain, the slope to the south of the house would turn to slippery mud and make it impossible to move any dirt in until things dried out. With the cooler temperatures in the offing, things take longer to dry out so getting the dirt moved soon is imperative. Looks like we’ll get it all in before the weather changes. This will give us the whole winter for the dirt to settle.

Jim