Closer to a floor

We've been working on all the things that go under the floor, small stones, the water line, the telephone line and the fiber optic conduit. Some of them were run through other conduit for protection since there was still to be a lot of weight and walking on them before the floor was poured.

More than a dozen piers of various sizes were formed to provide needed support for the posts that will hold up the roof. Some of them are shown in these two pictures. After digging and forming them we got a lot of rain. They appear here full of water. Though the floor is all rock in these pictures, underneath is heavy clay which drains very slowly.

The large rectangle in the second shot is a replacement for six or seven smaller piers that were so close together their forms would have overlapped. The area covers most of the master bedroom's closet.

The rooms-to-be, from top to bottom, left to right: small half-bath, laundry/utility room, "office" area, bathroom and master bedroom.

Getting some water

It's a long story and I won't go through it all here, but I finally got the water line installed and saved about $350 compared to the best quote I had gotten. These pictures follow the line from near the water meter (top, east) back to the building (bottom, west). The second picture shows a side trench which leads to a hydrant (3rd picture) close to where we plan to create a new, larger vegetable garden.







Before the trench was filled we also dropped in a new telephone line and a flexible conduit through which Smithville Telephone will eventually push a fiber optic line. We will not have to dig another trench when their installation schedule gets them here in the next two years. (Our rural road is not way high up on their priority list.)

The tarp along the trench was a futile attempt to minimize the rain water getting into the trench.

All three lines came through tubes we placed in the concrete footing. They run from there, under the floor (that would soon be poured) and come up inside the future walls of the utility/laundry room.

Winter mini-vacation

Cabin fever was setting in and there wasn't anything we could do at the house site, so I booked a few nights at McCormick's Creek State Park. When we loaded the car and started out the driveway we got about twenty feet before getting stuck in deep snow. I started to dig out but it was going very slowly when the neighbor across the road came home from work, started up his tractor and plowed us out. What a guy! He'd already spent the whole day at his job plowing parking lots.

There are miles of trails at McCormick's Creek and the roads in the park were in better shape than those outside. The arrived we decided to hike one of the trails and some of the nearly deserted roads.

We weren't the only ones using the plowed roads. Sandy encountered these two not far from the inn. As we walked along they stayed ahead of us until they headed into the woods. When we caught up, I saw this guy who'd been browsing for anything he could eat.





We ventured quite a way along a trail, down a long stairway and to the creek which was beautiful covered by snow and ice. The trail crossed the creek and it wasn't completely frozen so we just crept along the bank until we saw the falls through the ice cycles.


The stay was over before we knew it and we headed home to feed the cat.

A serious snowfall

The second week of February brought a few days of serious snow. Here are a few pictures of what we saw from the windows.

This young dear was hungry enough to come up close to the barn.






With a foot of snow, our feathered friends lined up on the vegetable fences at the feeders waiting their turns.







Air traffic was piled up, too. As each bird got its share, the next one moved up the tree and onto the suit feeder.

3 months just fly by

It's been nearly three months since the last entry. After the concrete walls were built, the weather turned cold and things slowed way down.

It's hard to write when there's nothing to show, and by the time there was something to show I was sort of out of the blogging habit.

Let's see if I can catch up over the next few days.