With emphasis on upward…
Footings have begun. Last Friday the concrete crew was here driving stakes at the foundation corners and running strings. On Mondayâ€â€in the midst of a driving rainâ€â€they began setting forms and running steel and with any luck we should have footings ready to be poured by Wednesday or Thursday.
The beauty of having the footing forms marking out the foundation is that you can actually get a feel for where the house is going to be. The foundation hole is much larger than the actual house is, so this seems to shrink the space considerably. Anybody who has ever built a house will tell you about this phenomenon. At every step of the process the house seems to grow and shrink at will. Dig the hole and the house seems huge. Place the footings and it shrinks considerably. Frame the walls and the house seems open and airy. Sheath it and put the windows in and it shrinks once again. The final insult? Once you put the sheetrock on the walls the house seems to constrict by almost unbelieveable proportions. Hopefully we’ve added enough windows to relieve us of that ultimate sense of confinement.
As an aside, at the back of the foundation and about 8 feet underground there’s a rather large underground stream that runs rather hard after it rains. It disappears once it’s been dry for a couple of days, but even if it rains for just a little bit, the water pours out at a quick pace for a couple of days. Fortunately, they’ve controlled it pretty well at this point and once the foundation is complete they should be able to control it completely with curtain drains. It’s amazing to see though.
Here’s a pretty small perspective shot of the foundation. I may put a larger one up a little later if this one seems to be too small. Have a look at the foundation forms! Can you see the house now?
(Blogitor’s note: I tried to upload a larger photo, but the blog apparently only allows photos of a certain size. I’ll try to post a larger shot elsewhere. -J)