77 A.D.: You Gotta Start at the Bottom

When you're building a house, you can do all the planning you want - move a wall on a whim, add a doorway just for fun - but there comes a time when you just have to put pencils down and start building.  And when that time comes, you gotta start at the bottom.  You may have lofty visions of vaulted ceilings, but before all that you have to dig a hole and pour a foundation.  It's dirty, painful, and not at all sexy, and yet it's the difference between a house of rock and a house of cards.

Our family's foundation-building has been similar lately:  Sleep.  Eat.  Breathe.  Pray.  Lather-Rinse-Repeat.  (no, seriously, I'm trying to take more showers.)  Lost amidst the kids and the busy and the life is that you can't build a thing without a foundation that can sustain the weight of it all.  Going faster, ignoring the center while dancing on the edges, only works until the rains come, only works until you drown without even knowing why.

I'm tired of drowning.  Time to rebuild on dry land.

So that's where we are.  At the bottom, but working our way up.  And just in time, too.  Because the literal rains began pouring within moments of the foundation getting into place.

 First, they dig a trench outlining the room plan.

For the footings closest to the pool, they had to go 7-feet down to be sure they were in undisturbed soil, since they were working in an area that the old pool had just vacated.  Deep roots, I like it.

My favorite part about the one on the left is the little white bridges the workers used to cross the trenches.  They're chopped-up pieces of the diving board from the old pool.  Nice job on the reuse, guys.

On the right is a shot the night before the pour.  After the digging, they frame out the trenches to define where the concrete will be poured.  The bolts that will eventually connect into the verticals are preset as well, so the concrete will form around them, ready to go for framing.

With everything set, it's time to pour.  Just as with the pool, the inspector comes out to check measurements, etc. before he gives the go-ahead.  And just as with the pool, a measurement's off that requires reshifting a wall or two.  Turns out the plans had a bad measurement or two.  I hope this is the last time that happens, but somehow I doubt it.  Further proof that in the end, you've just gotta put your money on the table, start building, and figure out a few things along the way.

  

The pouring process was much less dramatic than with the pool, partly because of volume and partly because we've now seen it all before.  Still, spray-on concrete is a remarkable thing.  Look how clean it all comes out once the wood mold is removed. 

The rains came that night, and didn't let up for over a week.  The pool filled halfway with muddy water, and the ground turned to soup, but the foundation stood.  Strong and reliable, and not at all sexy.