12 July 2018

Troy and the Goodro’s big boom truck delivered $4,700 worth of barn building materials mid-morning.  The first thing we’re going to need from that delivery are the 2x6x12 pressure treated (PT) lumber that will become the wall sole plates, so I looked through the piles to make sure those boards hadn’t gotten buried under something heavy, i.e., the monster LVL’s.  Finding no 2x6 PT, I asked Troy where they were.  “You ordered 2x4 PT”, he said.  “Oh, oh”, says I, (or words to that effect) scurrying into the house to get my list.  Sure enough, I had ordered 2x4’s, knowing full well that we need 2x6’s.  So Troy loaded the 2x4’s back on his truck and promised to send out some 2x6’s before Monday.  After Troy left, finished breaking off the form ties on the dirt side of the building.  After lunch, mixed up some hydraulic cement in anticipation of patching a few areas on the inside of the walls where the person tapping the forms didn’t do a very good job of getting the concrete to flow.  Who, me?  Now, you should know that working with hydraulic cement happens to be absolutely miserable, ‘cause it sets in less than a minute… literally.  So you can only make a teensy amount at a time, then by the time you scamper over to where it needs to be applied it’s getting hard already.  Worse yet, I discovered that the outside seams between the west and south walls and the floor slab (48 linear feet) are in pretty rough shape, so those seams need to be completely parged with that cement.  Many, many batches got the west wall seam done and me worn out.  Chree and I checked the poured walls for square, plumb, and level… twice.  The south wall is perfectly plumb and level and the same length as the east wall… both being ⅛″ too long.  The west wall is sort of plumb and sort of level, but ⅛″ too short.  So far, not too awful bad.  However, the north wall, which is only 11¼″ high, is out of plumb by ¾″ over that short height and is ⅜″ too long.  Not good!  And, because the concrete walls aren’t the same length, the diagonals (which are used to check that the foundation is square) differ by ⅞″.  Looks like we’ll be having some “fun” with the carpentry!