Foundation complete!

Now that deserves an exclamation mark!

[Our apologies for the late post. For awhile, we didn't have anything new to report, thanks to freezing weather and other delays, and then when we did, reporting took a back seat to life. But now we're back, in full force.]

After skillfully arranging all of the lego pieces, the guys were finally able to pour the cement in the blocks last Wednesday. With our foundation finally poured and curing, we were ready for our appraiser. For those unfamiliar with progressive construction mortgages [John says: "progressive" as in based on progress, not "progressive" as in left-leaning politics], the homeowners (us) receive the value of their mortgage in installment payments called "draws." The draws are based on the portion of the construction that is completed. Our appraiser visited the site on Monday, and assessed the work to date as 15 per cent complete, which is exactly right for the first draw. The first draw covers the completion of the excavation, footings, and foundation. This is good news for us, and for our construction crew, who are paid based on the appraiser's assessment.

We also had a meeting with a potential stair supplier yesterday. Our house design includes two sets of free-standing stairs: one set going from the first floor to the second, the other from the second floor to the third. Both sets of stairs have open risers and a single centre stringer (steel beam thing that supports the stairs) instead of conventional side stringers. The stairs, as they are designed, are unique and dramatic. They may also break the bank, so we're trying to find ways to still get the look we want for less. We're expecting a revised quote for the stairs tomorrow.

The crew is now working on wrapping the foundation with a waterproof membrane, which you can see in the bottom left part of the photo above. (That's the garage door opening on the right. I take the blame for the terrible photo; the perspective is totally crazy.) At the same time, they're framing the steps to the basement, which will have its own separate entrance from the backyard. Next they'll pour the concrete for the basement steps and the support posts in the backyard for the deck off of the second floor.

We're really looking forward to stage 2: walls, windows and exterior doors. Once the shell is up, we'll be well on our way.

Did we remember dimension how small da house is? Or, one person's yard is another person's metre

Apart from fun with a dumb pun, we've also been having fun with the measurements of our house. We have a very small lot, 25 by 77 feet, we think, although we have never personally measured it. To get some living space, we're building up three stories in the back, but the city restriction keeps us to ten metres (32.8 feet?). The house is supposed to be 42 feet long and 20 feet wide. This leaves us .6 metres from one neighbour and 1.2 metres from another. As you can see, the mix of metric and imperial measurements adds to the fun.

Our builder is also having a great time with the little sandbox we've bought for him to play in. He had to excavate right up against the foundation of the one neighbour and has been banging into drain pipes and bushes with the other. The real fun began when height became an issue. We knew that we had to excavate through rock, but weren't sure how much. There was more dirt than we had feared there would be and they got to the rock after something like six feet (two metres?).

The rock is limestone and comes off in layers, which is good, but the layers are approximately one foot thick. One layer off, they were within six inches of where we were supposed to be, but another layer would put us six inches too deep. Dig too deep and have to fill in the six inches with gravel or stay shallow and account for the lost six inches in some other way? Economy dictated the latter and we decided to reduce the nine foot wall on our third floor to eight foot. Why not eight foot, six inches? Because drywall and studs come in standard lengths of eight and nine feet. No one wanted the extra work, expense and waste of cutting down those drywall sheets and studs by six inches. OK, so we have eight foot walls on the third floor; much cosier in bedrooms.

The city engineer, however, told our builder that, because he was building on rock, he could reduce the thickness of the footings. We got a couple of inches back. He was working off of the measurements on the survey, which give heights for the bottom of the footing, the top of the footing and the top of the foundation. These were in metric measurements above sea level and set by measuring against a benchmark on a telephone pole and the top of the foundations of the neighbour houses. This, apparently, is all standard practice. The surveyors all use this method.

Measuring from the bottom of the footing, he reduced the footing thickness and thought he had gotten some inches back. When he did the metric conversion, however, he found out that the survey was wrong. Our footings were too high again. No problem, we had already sacrificed a foot off the height of the building. Then he laid our Arxx insulated concrete forms. The forms might be a little higher than we thought and you have to add a quarter inch to each course; six courses adds an inch and a half. Lo and behold, by the time he got the specified number of courses of those in, our foundation had climbed to eight inches higher than the survey said it should be. This would likely put us over the city height restriction.

Then he realized that, way back when, he had replaced the joists in the plan with joists recommended by the supplier. The original joists were 14 inches thick, the replacements were 11 and 7/8ths inches. Two inches a floor and we had reclaimed six inches that we thought we had lost. Somehow or other, we're going to come in not too far from the 10 metres of height we're allowed, and we'll still be able to have a six-inch parapet to hold our green roof in. We will have a higher foundation than we had thought and we hope this doesn't look odd. Our designer says it shouldn't.

We still have to figure out what to do with the front door. There's a way to bring it down by a foot or so, closer to where it is in the plans. This will cost extra and somehow will result in about two feet of stairs in the foyer. We want to see the drawing of how it would be if we don't bring it down before we decide.

On the horizontal plane we're also having fun. The survey, about which we have become wary, shows our house extending a few inches or centimetres past the end of one neighbour, but on the ground we have come short of the end of the neighbour's house. Our builder thinks that the survey shows the dimensions of our back walkout, too. But then it also shows that we have about 20 feet of backyard and it sure doesn't look like we have that much when we peer in through the construction fence.

Our builder laughed when we asked him if the foundation was the right length. We hope he is not building it by eye, but still want one of our designers to get out there with a tape measure. I'm sure they will humour us.