9 May 2014

Forecast to be sort of a rainy, miserable day, so spent most of the morning doing detailed drawings to pinpoint where the footers need to be placed for the chimney and the two support posts for the steel I-beam that will support the middle of the house.  For a break from sitting, tackled smoothing out the driveway with the Kubota; the fill that was put in to even out the driveway slope was more than a little bony.  In the midst of that endeavor, Ceil Todd (neighbor across the street) brought over a couple of banana nut muffins hot out of the oven.  They went down real easy with some homemade chicken soup Lynne brought over the other day.  After two hours of grading, the driveway is much more passable (you’ll only lose one or two fillings driving over it), but still needs a couple of truckloads of crushed gravel to be right.  About 3:30 Larry Kaufmann (Long Ridge Concrete) arrived with a caravan driven by his two assistants, Kevin Clark and Victor Fifield.  The two helpers spent some quality time unloading concrete forms while Larry and I supervised reviewed the plan of attack for next week. By 4:15 they were gone, leaving me Long Ridge’s rebar cutter / bender so I can get some good exercise this weekend.  Went back to drawing… determining where the two Lower Level toilets and shower drain will be located with respect to the foundation wall sill plates, as that plumbing and the main waste line have to be roughed in before the cellar slab is poured.  Plus the main waste line has to penetrate the west side frost wall at some elevation en route to the septic tank.  Somehow they forgot to teach me all these things in college…