Update

It took a while to get the new contractor going - we didn't have a firm price from Baylee, and meanwhile other crews were stopping by giving us prices. We finally decided to stick with Dwain from Baylee (who did the last concrete pour) and things moved quickly. Too quickly. The last 10 days have been extremely hectic.

Eduardo and crew came out on Thursday to set the flooring. David stayed with them until the first sheet was glued and screwed, then went back to work. When he checked on the crew a couple of hours later, all the sheets were in, with the first sheet "Norboard" side up, and the remaining 64 sheets with "this side down" on top. (It was also in spanish, but to be fair, it was really difficult to read.)

The concrete pour was set for Tuesday, but luckily no concrete was available until Thursday (they would never have made it for Tuesday). The crew built bucks for the windows and doors on Friday and Saturday. (The bucks are the wood frames around the windows and doors that are attached to the foam ICF blocks.) The ICF walls were set Saturday and Sunday, and the rebar stirrups and brackets were set Monday and Wednesday. Or was it Tuesday and Thursday? Anyways, Thursday was rainy, so the pour ended up being rescheduled for Saturday.

And while the blocks were being set, another crew was setting the forms for the columns. You can see the rebar for the columns in the picture above. There were lots of problems with the columns - one of the workers hurt his arm, and they didn't always show up when they were supposed to. So it was a rush to get the columns set correctly, plumb, and level for the concrete pour. Not sure that they were ever completely fixed, but they are what they are.


Dwain would often show up on the job with a badge from the Lutheran charities Katrina volunteer organizations. Sometimes he would bring the permanent volunteers with him to show them an ICF house. We teased him about when the volunteers would be showing up to work - next thing we knew, there were 15 kids mostly from Illinois, with some from Minnesota, the Bronx, and Texas, at our house ready to work. Apparently they had run out of work at the other jobs, so they stayed busy cleaning up around the new house (including busting up some concrete slop from previous pours) and working on the jungle gym for the girls. They were a great bunch of kids.
There won't be any more work done on the house for a couple of weeks, so I won't be posting for a while, unless I just decide to bore you with SBA versus Bank loan problems, or dealing with the geniuses at the code office to get them to write a letter to say that we can't repair the old (now non-existent) house. Without the letter, we can't get our $30K from flood insurance to build higher. Nothing is easy!