Eventful

My beautiful Mom

The first bit of cement coming out of the truck

That's the word... eventful.  It's been an eventful couple of weeks since I've written.

The slab was poured for the house yesterday.  We had 3 cement trucks and about 9 guys working.  Things move quickly.  Chuck told me he had everything scheduled to start at 6:30 yesterday morning, since it was going to be a hot day.  I showed up at 6:30, and everyone else beat me to it.  Les had to work in New Mexico yesterday, so he didn't see the action until later.

The guys smoothing the cement.

It took about 3 hours to pour all of the concrete we needed to fill that big, huge hole.  But first, we need to go back to last week.  Les and I left for Iowa for a birthday party for my Mom's 90th birthday.  7 of her 8 kids showed up, as well as sisters, nieces, grand kids, etc.  We all converged onto Ames Iowa for a shindig.  So while Les and I were driving the 900 miles to Iowa on Friday, Chuck had sand, gravel, moisture barrier, radon system and the insulation installed in the big, giant hole.  That made it not quite so big and giant anymore.  Les and I returned on Monday, then concrete was poured Wednesday.

Doggy footprints

Now... and this is the way my mind works.  We've spent thousands and thousands of dollars to get us to this point, but I wanted some "character" in the slab.  We intend to stain the slab and just live on that... thus, the insulation and the extra materials in it.  I figure that we can stain and seal the slab, and concrete stain is absolutely gorgeous when it's done right.  And... down the road if we don't want to live on the concrete anymore, we can just tile over it.  Simple beans.

So for this "character" that I wanted, I had to wait until the concrete was dry enough to walk on, but still wet enough to take some playfulness.  I asked the girls to walk around on the cement.  They did.  I now have doggy footprints in our floor.

More Doggy Footprints

Then, I picked some grasses and flowers, and spread them onto the concrete.  We now will forever more have pretty little patterns here and there on our floor.  I couldn't be happier with the result.  The sunflowers didn't do what I had hoped, in fact they made a mess.  But, nothing ventured nothing gained.

Then I washed the girls' feet and headed on home.  I'm so thrilled with my new home!  It's coming along so quickly now.

After curing 1 day

Grasses

Paw Prints

More rain

Wild, woodland flowers loving the rain.
 

Finally, after hoping and praying, and dreading another hot - hot - hot day, it's finally been raining.  Monsoon season is upon us for the last few weeks.  It rains almost every day.  Last year during monsoon season, we got maybe 12 raindrops per day.  This year, we're getting torrents of rain.  Yay!

The trees are breathing a sigh of relief.  Everything seems calmer, happier.

The mosquitos are happy, that's for sure!  But they don't bother me too much.  They bite, I itch for a minute, then it goes away.  Not happy about any possible diseases they may carry though.

The house is coming along well.  I'm going to be ordering the trusses and the windows and doors on Monday.  We've almost nailed down the framer.  There is an Amish gentleman who we're probably going to hire.  He's expensive, but I've heard he does wonderful work.  He will put up the frame for the house and he can put in our new metal roof.  I like the look of the dark green metal roofs on country homes.  I haven't decided on the colors for the house yet... any suggestions? 



Look at the peak in the background!

I found this new app that will define any color in any picture you take.  A really nice thing.  So I go around taking pictures of rocks and such -- still haven't decided on anything in particular.  The world is filled with so many gorgeous colors, how is one to decide?

I'm shopping for doors.  The house has an exterior door in the master bedroom, the laundry room, the mud room, the dining room, and of course, the front door.  We've decided on all of the doors except the front door.  Since I've designed the whole house, Les wanted to pick out the front door.  He wanted an arched door, but they're so expensive.  So he conceded to let me do the front door, too.  I've found something he will probably really like.  It looks like it has an arch in it, and will still fit with a sidelight.  You can't put one sidelight with an arched door, it would look really weird.  And there is not enough room for 2 sidelights to balance it out.


My muddy girls.

The rough-in for the plumbing is in.  Then later next week, we will pour the slab.  I'd like a few shallow doggy footprints in the concrete.  We'll see if we can get everyone to behave for that.

We should have the house dried-in by winter.  Then we will work on the inside.  What a wonderful feeling it is to finally see my dream come true. 

Manifold plumbing.  That long rod on the right is for lightning strikes.