10.30.2014

Jim worked this morning and more gravel and dirt grading in the back of the building.  Amazing how we can walk all the way around the side now to the back.

Late morning, we took the truck into Lowe's to pick up some Styrofoam board - Jim plans on using this now to keep the footers insulated over the winter and we'll use them later on too.

Once we got back, we concentrated on putting up the waterproofing membrane.  I had worked yesterday on scraping cement off this back area - this corner had a lot of spills since it was a tough corner to fill with concrete.  But it was back in the little ditch to do the bottom part of the wall.

Drumroll please...here's Jim putting up the very last piece of membrane on the walls!

 

Just a look down the back wall with all the waterproofing finished - the wall looks so amazingly flat and straight!

 

No time to rest on our laurels, it was time to move on to dimple board.  We started on the longest section - these pieces were 9 feet so they were kind of hard to manage - especially going around corners and having to be up on the ladder.

Once we got two pieces up, we needed to fill up the bottoms with gravel to keep them in place.  It's really important to make sure that no gravel gets behind the dimple board to damage the membrane - so typically, I have to hold the bottom down while Jim shovels gravel in place until it's stable on its own.

So it was back to taking turns filling up the buckets...

...and dumping them next to the wall.

 

We were really happy again today with our progress!

10.29.2014

This was another productive day.  Jim got gravel done around the corner and started working on the outside footer drains.

Going down the side of the building...

Because we have so much dirt built up in front, the Bobcat can go almost the whole way down!  That's huge because we weren't sure how we were going to easily get gravel in these areas.  The footer drains need to sit in good gravel as well as be covered up with it, so that requires a lot of gravel.  Jim brought bucketfuls of gravel over and I shoveled the gravel into 5 gallon pails.

Then Jim carried the pails over and dumped the gravel.

We got the footer drains connected all the way around the building, hooked up to the drain by the step in the back.

More buckets of gravel on top of the drain around the back.

The side is all finished - we have to leave enough exposed because we have to have another inspection before we can totally backfill.

Then we switched sides.  We got 2 more pieces of dimple board on and started filling up around the downspout drainpipe with gravel.

Once we got it up to the right level, Jim was able to continue the pipe down and around the corner.

Again - this pipe will eventually connect to the gutter downspouts but for now, we just brought the pipe up as far as we need to now for backfilling purposes and capped it off.

A close up of the gravel being poured in - I have to stand in the ditch and hold the dimple board down at the bottom so that no gravel gets behind it.

Time for the geo fabric (look how much better this is than the thin, white stuff from Home Depot!

A few shovelfuls of dirt to hold it in place.

Then Jim can use the Bobcat to fill in.

At the end of the day, Jim has the whole side graded and it looks amazing!

Then he did more grading in front of the building - makes it look so finished!

10.28.2014

Jim started the morning putting more gravel inside the building - makes it feel even more like a real structure now - it has a floor, walls and a roof!

 

 

Then it was time to switch gears and start doing some outside work.  So it was back to putting up some dimple board.

 

Then we put gravel down and extended the pipe that will eventually connect to a gutter system.

Going around the building...

Unrolling our new geo fabric - this is great stuff and much sturdier than the Home Depot offering.  This goes on top of the gravel covering the footer drains so that the next layer of dirt and rocks doesn't clog up the water flow and cause issues.

Jim pushed dirt down from our piles and I pulled the big rocks out.

Then he kept putting dirt over the area, building it up so he could drive the Bobcat further and further back.  Now it's difficult to get gravel in these areas not easily accessible - carrying shovelfuls of gravel would be too hard and too slow.

As he got enough dirt built up, he could drive the Bobcat and dump more gravel.

Of course, no gravel work is complete without lots of hand shoveling.

Then we extended the geo fabric further down...

...and repeated building up the area with dirt.

No more ditch next to the house!

Time to finish assembling the drainage pipe.

Now the pipe is around the corner and will go up to connect to the gutters eventually.  Jim will make a T in the pipe as we build up higher to connect to a downspout in the corner.

Wow - you can see how much we built this area up - looks great!

We switched gears once again in the late afternoon and started putting up more waterproofing membrane.  The Nudura rep brought us winter guard this time - it's supposed to be stickier and designed to install in colder temps.  We were a little afraid that it would be much harder to work with but we're pros at this now - no issues!

 

At the end of the day, Jim stayed to work on spreading dirt in front of the building, working on getting the grade the way he wants it.  Picture to come tomorrow!

 

Okay, Jim said I had to put this on the blog since I put everything about him on there!  As we were working on the backfilling and I was picking out rocks, I put my hand out to grab a rock right when another one was rolling down (duh!).  So my finger got caught in the middle.  It turned instantly purple - the front side was purple all the way down to my hand - and very swollen.  We thought it was broken so I went and had an x-ray.  No broken bone - yay! - just badly bruised.  Lesson learned hopefully!  

10.27.2014 - Decking is all up!

Jim did a lot of work today before he even started working...namely, he moved all of the extra steel decking out of the building and over to our staging area.  If you remember the steel saga, the final delivery of steel that we got wasn't quite what we started out with.  We ended up getting decking they had on site rather than waiting for the other supplier.  So the steelyard gave us some extras as well as the cutoffs from the pieces they had to cut for us - hopefully we can sell some of this at some point.  But it was a lot of work - Jim couldn't use the forks on the Bobcat to get them out of the building because the garage door openings wouldn't be wide enough.  So he had to move each one individually outside the building and put them onto the forks of the Bobcat before he could move them to their new home.

I had to go pick up more wire for the welder this morning and by the time I got to the site at lunch, Jim had also gotten 3 more pieces cut and was moving the 3rd up onto the deck.

The final piece had been damaged a bit - Jim had to do a lot of work to get it in good shape to be used.  First, he pounded the damage out with the rubber mallet.

Then he flipped it over and brought out the big tools!

That's one big wrench!  But he finally got it to the point where he was happy with it.

It was even difficult trying to lift these pieces up - the last bay is smaller and there wasn't much room to get the Bobcat in position and still have room to lift the deck up.  But he finally got it.

Then it was welding time and time to get the concrete drill out again.

 

Again, because Jim had to sort of make do with a couple of these pieces, he had to do some custom fitting on the last piece.  Unfortunately, since it was already up on the deck, that meant bringing up the saw and cutting up on the deck.

Then it was time....drumroll, please....for putting the final piece of decking in place!

It really looks incredible, both inside...

...and outside!