THE BIG CEMENT POUR DAY

So, the moment of truth…Our first big pour day for our walls. After being thoroughly traumatized by our footings cement pour, D. agreed to come and help us out for our foundation walls pour. All we needed to do was have all the walls properly braced and they would come and help us out for the day. When pouring ICF walls you have to brace it really well or you could have a blow-out, which would be a huge disaster and pain. Well, no matter how much bracing we had done, we still worried it wasn't enough and so just hours before the cement trucks and the pumper truck was to arrive we were still scrambling to brace. I loved it on days when Dave and his crew were on site. They worked so quickly and efficiently that I really was just in the way, so I went from being crew member to spectator/watermelon/water girl. Definitely happy not to be working with concrete and letting the guys handle it that day. Nevertheless, each concrete pour was stressful and crazy and mayhem, no matter how prepared we thought we were for it…you just have to move so fast as your doing it.

(Happy not to be on the wall) In the end it all worked out, though there were times they had to hustle. That is just the way it goes with the concrete pours… After it was all said and done, Jeremy and I had done our foundation from start to finish in about 3 weeks time. Curious, I asked D. how long it would take him and his crew to do the foundation…his answer…3 days!!!…yikes…I consoled myself by remembering that we did not have to pay anywhere close to $70, 000 for our foundation. So all of our sweat equity, though painfully slow, would be worth it in the end. Yes, we may have been slow, but the thing I liked about us doing the work is we did not cut any corners. I had seen how D. could slap the ICF together in no time flat, but we actually felt good about doing it with a little more precision and perfection. Maybe it doesn't matter in the end, but I liked not seeing big gaps in the ICF and feeling like it was tight and secure. In the end, no blowouts and we had our basement walls.