Fayston, VT - From the Ground Up

  We're back. We need to get this puppy ready for Nate. He's coming back with his excavator buddies to backfill, or should I say llifkcab? Let's first define backfill. The trench that we have is only for the footings and getting the foundation in place, most of which will eventually be underground. The process of backfilling is when Nate comes back and fills in the trench with the dirt that he dug up earlier. Our two main concerns when it comes to backfill is rot and moisture. We've already stripped the forms of all of their bracing. Any wood that gets buried will eventually rot, potentially making the ground unstable. We solve the moisture problem with Ice and Water Shield (you see it pictured here on the forms.) Ice and Water Shield (the same stuff we used on the sills) essentially comes as a 4-foot-wide roll of tape that we cut to size and stick on the forms. We need it everywhere that will be in contact with the ground. Nudura makes this special stuff that is extra ...

  We're back. Today's goal is to get the deck on. I confirmed that the floor for the first floor of the house is in fact called a deck. We will later be adding a deck in front of the deck, but this deck will be a deck and not a floor, unlike the other deck. The imposter deck. This is a lift. We have sheets of Advantech (with an 'h'), that tongue and groove stuff, and they are HEAVY. The lift uses a motor to run the sheets up to the deck for us. This is Steve and Rich. Hi Steve and Rich! Before they laid the first row of Advantech down, they snapped a chalk like at 4ft to get the row straight. As they go, they use a caulking gun to squirt glue along every I-joist and the rim joist, where applicable. When the Advantech goes down and Rich nails it tight, the glue holds extra tight so we don't have any squeaks in our floor. Nice job, Steve and Rich! We got to eat lunch inside today. It's dark in here! That's a good-looking deck, right there. You'll notice wi...

  We're back. Our walls held. High-five! Our goal for the next two days is to get the deck on. It's really the makings of the first floor. I don't know why it is called the deck, but it is. This is a boom truck. This guy delivers the lumber that we need for our deck. He has a crazy-long arm, like the pump truck. Not as crazy-long though. We wanted him to heave the lumber over the wall and into the house, but he couldn't do it. Maybe next time. This is our lumber. We have I-joists, rim joists (Don't quote me on that. I didn't ask about these things, the ones with the green on them), and Advantec. Advantec is that special plywood that we used for Tommy's deck a few weeks back, the tongue and groove stuff. Joey and Steve are making the sills, getting silly. The sills start with PT wrapped with ice and water shield. Steve drilled holes in the PT so that the anchor bolts that we set in the concrete can come up through the PT and be used to hold it in place. Next ...

  We're back. We've got concrete coming, and, if we're being honest, we're looking weak. We're looking like a wet slice of bread. We put the "we" in weak. Time to beef up. Now that's a little better! Notice Joey, being a beast. Also notice the window frame. Two points about the frame... 1) It is braced like no tomorrow. Concrete will be pushing on it from all sides, so it needs to hold strong. 2) The long edges (vertical edges) are dovetailed. Don't squint. You can't see it. Imagine a Chinese Finger Trap. You know how you stick your fingers in the trap and it grabs you when you try to pull them out? The concrete is your finger, and the dovetail in the trap. The purpose is that the dovetails keep the concrete in place, and vice versa. That's one sturdy birdie! Now THAT is what I'm talking about. We're ready to rock AND roll. The goal of bracing is to imagine all the ways that concrete would like to escape these forms, and to do every...

  We're back. We're stackin'. That opening you see right there is the garage, and the walls on either side are 4.5ft high. They need to be 9ft high. The staging is how we get to 9ft. This is a closeup shot of one staging post. The green bit the goes off to the bottom right is the brace to keep the wall from falling over from side to side. It also helps us keep the wall plumb. The other green piece that is bracketed into the metal post will serve as the base for our aluminum/wooden planks. Keep your head on a swivel. We need to be looking high, but we also need to be looking low. The Lego-like forms leave gaps where they meet the concrete footings. Nudura provides insulating foam that helps us fill those gaps. The foam is also the same color as the forms. Cute! We have bracing on the inside with the staging and the foam. We also need bracing on the outside. These 2x4s will prevent the wall from blowing out from the bottom. It's starting to look homey in here! The corners...

  We're back. This sucker needs an 8ft wall by Thursday. We're going up today. Way up. You might be thinking, "Matt, what is this baby blue garbage I'm looking at? I've never seen this before." First of all, woah. That's uncalled for. Second, these are your ICFs, otherwise known as insulated concrete forms. The next question is, "Why?" Excellent question, recently-relaxed reader. When you are building concrete walls, you need to frame the walls, pour the concrete, remove the framing, add a layer of insulating foam, add lumber for your inner wall, blah blah blah. I might have made up a step or missed one or mixed a few up. I don't know, I'm still new here. Day 7, see? The bottom line is that there are a lot of steps that take a lot of time when you are talking about the traditional concrete wall building methods. With ICFs, there are two steps: stack the blocks, and pour the concrete. Done. The forms provide framing, insulation, a surface ...

  We're back, and we're formin' like Norman, whoever that is. These are the ICFs, the insulated concrete forms. And that's a radio. And that's some wood. And so on. What we do is we line the footings with the forms. The forms, as you will see if you scroll a bit, are made of two pieces of foam connected lengthwise by plastic gates. The space between the two pieces is where we will pour the concrete. Forms sit on top of each other like big Legos and lock into place. As we learned with the footings, concrete is strong and will apply pressure to its container (remember Kool-Aid Man?) as it is poured. The black plastic pieces are the gates that I was talking about. Those metal clippy gate things that connect the two gates in the picture together are used to keep one piece of the ICFs to the next so that there are no gaps for the concrete to leak from. These metal straps, the same straps that we used for the footings, run under the forms and are screwed into the gates th...

  We're back, and what a day we've got. Try to convince me this ground isn't blessed. I dare you. Our footings are looking NICE! We stripped the frame off. All you need to do is grab a hammer, a screw gun, and a pry bar, then go to town. These footings will be buried, so keeping the wood frame on is asking it to rot, and that is a no-no. We did our best to keep our boards intact since we will be able to use them at another point in the project. Hi Joey! Joey is painting the tops of the footings with a moisture sealant. Concrete is tough, but it is porous, meaning that stuff, including water, can work its way through over time. Remember all that water that we had sitting in the trench last week? That's what we're working with. If you would take a peak into your crystal ball, you will see that we are to pour more concrete on top of these footings as we build the foundation. The moisture sealant keeps that water in the ground, out of the rest of that concrete, and, mos...

 We're back. Today's goal is to fill the footing frames with concrete. We have a few odds and ends to tie up before we get going on this mammajamma. Take a look at the lower left-hand corner of this image. Do you see the gap between the frame and the ground? We need to fill that. You can see Joey on the far side filling the gaps over there, right before he told me to stop playing around on my phone and get to work. What he's doing is shoveling dirt and mud from around the frame up against the sides. We do this so that the concrete does not leak out when we pour. You may also have noticed that the stone got delivered. You can see it in filling the frames partway on the lower right side of the image. I was asked, "Why stone when the ground is wet and mushy? Isn't it going to sink anyway?" Good question, astute observer. The answer is no, the stone and the ground will not sink. We dig deep enough that the ground under the mush is rock solid, almost literally (the...