Main floor and beast.

The week of September 12 to 16 had an odd start. Lena had to go to an appointment. As I was under the impression that not much would be going on at the site, we decided that I would drive her to the meeting and then pick her up. This was a good thing, because traffic and parking nearby are very annoying. However, it turned out that a fair amount of work took place. The crew came and laid the next 3 rows of blocks on the main floor, and Dennis and Mike busied themselves making the bucks [wood frames] for the windows and doors. Hydro also came by and did the layout for the electrical hookup. When I showed up on Tuesday, much had been altered.

It turned out to be a rainy morning on Tuesday, and I expected no one to be there when I arrived. Not too surprisingly, Dennis was in his van parked in the driveway. He had just finished trucking materials, and we went over what was to happen the rest of the week. Though we had expected Stephane to show up with the shovel, after speaking with Gilles, Dennis said he would come on Wednesday, along with loads of gravel for the garage and french drain. The latter had to be covered with more gravel prior to the backfill, and I had to take photos to send to the township. Dennis left for home and more supplies, and I headed off to Cornwall to run some errands that included a trip to the windows supplier to ask a few questions concerning the siding and door locks.

I arrived late on Wednesday and found Dennis and Stephane sitting and chatting. It turned out that a hose had broken on the shovel, and, as nothing was available in Alexandria, Gilles was off to St-Clet, 55 km away, to get a replacement. Work restarted in the afternoon with the repair done.

This is rough work, with Dennis doing the lion’s share. Shovel dumped gravel in the hole and I shovelled it on the tile drain. I took a photo and Stephane then dumped the backfill with Dennis scrambling to get large rocks off the tile. No easy task. This continued from the front, to the east side and finally the back. The west side was already covered. With an attached garage with no basement, the tile is placed on the wall adjoining the house. There is tile around the garage, but code doesn’t require it. Err on the side of caution. [More on this later.]

Later in the afternoon, we confronted the beast. In the front of the house, on the edge of the foundation hole there was a boulder that could not be moved. At first, we thought it could be left in place, but ultimately, it appeared that it might be a risk to the foundation, so it had to be removed. Ha-ha. The battle ensued, and in the 45 minutes, the boulder was winning. Stephane dug around, and it kept getting bigger and bigger, and still refused to budge.

With yet more effort and dirt removal, Stephane got it to stir a little, but getting out to the surface was another thing altogether. One more time, into the breach, literally and figuratively, steps Dennis. In tandem with the shovel, Dennis placed rocks and dirt under the boulder as Stephane did his best to keep it raised as much as possible. The video below catches the suspense.

An hour into it, the shovel prevailed. Dennis asked what I might want to do with it. I said that, perhaps, we’d put it out front to have a pissing contest with the neighbours who put their beast at the entrance. Dennis, always more practical, brought up the fact that we need at least 2 retaining walls. We’ve got lots of big stones, but with the beast, one might do. Looks like we may go with that.

Thursday was a busy day. The crew came to work on the main floor again and got a few more rows up. I caught two issues. The windows in the front are lined up in height with the top of the front door: 84 inches or 7 ft. Somehow, the washroom window was set at 78 inches. Robbie said this was an easy fix and it was.

On the back wall, Robbie had set the 3 big windows at 20 inches off the floor, in line with the designer’s specifications. I was certain that the designer told me code dictated that the windows could not be lower, but Robbie said he’d never heard of this. In any case, base height was fine, and actually. an inch or two higher in order to best place the rebar. The next issue for Robbie was that this meant that the top of the back windows would be 8 ft and not 7 like the front. This would go against the convention where all windows are lined up. In my view, front and back needn’t be the same, and I told him a little asymmetry never hurt anybody. We’ll see, once fully done and lived with.

More crucially, the ensuite window was lined up with bottom of the windows, and not the top, as the window in the basement washroom was. Mercifully, another easy fix.

Little more difficult is the top of the walls — and this is an instance where plans and reality don’t fully match up. In going up to 22 inches in the bottom from 20, this meant that the space above the window was reduced from 12 inches to 10. This does not leave enough room for the rebar stirrups to reinforce the lintels as the engineer requires. The walls have to be raised. Going up a whole 16 inch brick makes no sense. Most sensible way is to go up about 3 or 4 inches with extensions that the block manufacture produces. Robbie phoned Emard Brothers to see if they had these in stock. They said they could order, but likely cheaper to just trim the top and bottom of regular blocks. They told Robbie he could scour their stock for any remainders they would discount. Robbie also said we could use the leftover partial blocks. Upshot, the problem is resolved with the walls, planned at 9 ft, now to be about 9″ 5″ or 9′ 6″. [ 2 inches rise on the bottom and the 3- 4 inches with the extensions on top.] It also means the vaulted ceiling peak will be over 13 feet instead of 12′ 9″. An unanticipated bonus.

Later in the afternoon, Stephane evened out the sand on the septic weeping bed and berm. Now the back yard is rough but uniform, and the view to the back from inside the basement area is unobstructed. The new yard is a large space, and will require some research into low maintenance landscaping.

On Friday, we dug the trench for the drain extension leading down the slope to the back of the yard. Dennis and I thought it would be one tile, but Stephane recommended 2. Dennis was going to merge the french drain with the sump drain. Stephane recommended a tile for both. If one blocked the other would still work. Convinced of the prudence of surplus caution, Dennis dispatched me to Home Hardware to get a hundred feet of “Big O”, 4 inch tile drain pipe.

When I returned, Stephane was already underway with the trench and we connected the 2 lengths of Big O, and proceed to lay it in. After a few metres, Stephane dumped the fill back in, with Dennis down in the trench removing the many stones that fell in from the top of the pipes. It is tough to say how humbling it is to watch Dennis rapidly do this tough work. At one point, he looked up at me and asked if young people today would do this work. Clearly, he doubts it, and I’m not about to persuade him otherwise.

The drain was done, with Stephane creating a small retaining wall at the end. I asked him to place a fairly large boulder nearby to identify the spot. From there, we went back to the area behind the garage to dig a hole for the first of two piers that will support the roof over the porch. The first is in the plan. The second is a replacement for the wall extension we eliminated off the back of the garage. We’re waiting for details about what reinforcements we might need, if any, from the engineer. There are issues here that I will take up later.

The crew came at lunch and pushed the walls a bit further. When not working with Stephane, Dennis and I supplied them with rebar. Dennis was also trimming blocks for them. At one point, he was in 3 places virtually at once. There is still a lot to do be done. Robbie was hoping for a Tuesday pour, but this is not at all likely, especially given the rain that has been coming down rather heavily at least one or two days a week for the last two months. It won’t be the first time it causes a delay.

On Saturday, Lena came down to see the progress and the beast. She was delighted with both, having hoped we might get a very large boulder from the dig. This one doesn’t disappoint. At $125 for the hour it took to dig it out, it makes it a fairly expensive lawn ornament, but hey, it’s the biggest on the block — so far.