one bite at a time

how do you eat an elephant?, my mom asks. i have no idea. robby is scratching his head... so she says, "one bite at a time." our house is the elephant. a big huge elephant. we bit off a lot this weekend...

the masons were there friday and i came home to a beautiful foundation... it really made my day. they did such a great job... they were extremely fast and very good. (notice the bubble perfectly centered on the level). these were actually taken after robby had already waterproofed the foundation... but you can still see how great it looks.

so the plan this weekend was to get the floor system in. but when we woke up saturday morning i got us all off track. i have been so distracted by the conditions of the yard, that i began thinking out loud about getting some of that taken care of while mom was here to help. the next thing i knew we were at home depot renting a tiller and going to logan's to buy plants that will cover up the ugly fences and fill in the front of the house. this whole task was extremely exhausting... and we didn't get anywhere near finishing, but we did get a good start. especially on the front. the pictures will show that... take a look back at the original posts to see the before. SO much better.

so while mom and i were trying to work on that, robby waterproofed the foundation wall, added the foundation drain, and graded around the foundation so water will run away from it. (and brought us several wheelbarrows full of dirt, tilled up the yard to make plant beds for us, and corrected us when we put plants in the wrong places... according to him).

i was so busy working, i really didn't get too many photos, but here are a few:

front of the house:

the plants we bought at logan's that will grow big and fast to cover the fence... love the color combination:

before of one corner: (really, before there were tiny little maple trees everywhere!)

after:

my mom is amazing. she showed up, cleaned our kitchen, sewed on buttons, and did a TON of work in the yard... and wasn't even tired today. i hope when i am her age i can be a super hero mom like she is.

self portrait time... we were so gross.

so today we woke up.... thought about not getting out of bed, and realized we had an elephant to tend to. i assisted robby by measuring where the anchor bolts were in the foundation and helping him drill holes in the sill. we got that done and moved on to the rim joist. that was mostly robby, but i helped when i could. that was about it before the storms rolled in. we got one floor joist in, just to say we did, but i didn't get a photo of that.

robby working hard today...

detail of the sill with the anchor bolts....

cool photo of work in progress... and the patterns it leaves behind.

rim joist finished:

the storm clouds looming...

self portrait from this afternoon just before the storms sent us home. (thank goodness. i can barely move.)