"How Firm a Foundation" or "I Was Not Aware of That"

Last time we began and ended with a Hole.  Now we needed to fill it!

I don't know about all of you (though most of you are probably much more savvy than me about these things), but when I thought about the bottom of a house - which happens more than you might think - I always just thought "foundation."  However, if you think that a foundation is what comes first in a house you have another think coming. 

It all begins with the footings.  What are footings, you ask?  Well, let me tell you.  They are giant slabs of messy concrete put there to hold up the bearing walls of the home and the foundation.  Yes, as the name indicates they are the "foot" of the foundation.  So, the first step are these little 2-3 feet tall walls in a 10" deep hole with re-bar sticking out of them.  In other words, a Mom's worst nightmare! Despite the inherent dangers we still took all our kids to see it and my sister's two boys came with us, too.  When my nephew saw these footings he looked at me very skeptically and said "Those are pretty short walls, Aunt Erin.  I'm not sure you can live there." 

(Pouring the footings)

So, next comes the foundation.  These are the concrete walls that support the weight of the home.  Because we have a basement in our house we have a big foundation.  They pour the walls first, the true foundation sitting on their feet.  (Is this possible to sit on feet?  I'm not sure, but the builder seemed to know what he was talking about.)  The important thing is to get square, straight walls.  If you don't, watch out! Like the Foolish Man on the sand your house may come a tumblin' down. 

(The foundation and footings-you can see them sitting where the stairs will be)

Once all this is there, they pour the slab, or floor of the foundation.  Really, what most of us (if I am representative of most of us) think of when we hear "foundation." 

(Here comes the slab!)

Turns out that while the slab is really important, the strong feet and square walls are really the key here to a strong, sturdy home.  I was fascinated by all of this in part because I am a nerd but mostly because I have been fascinated by everything in the house!

(This picture shows the suspended slab laid over Dave's Man Cave part of the basement.  He really wanted to have space under the garage for exercise and so on, so we had this extra step to the process.  Below is a picture of them pouring the garage slab over this suspended, hollow concrete.  Wow!)

Once you have the footings, foundation and slab you can start to frame the house.  In this case our builder and his crew were amazing- this house was framed so fast you could get splinters just by looking at it.  And because our home is being built on the corner of two pretty busy streets in town it seemed like everyone was looking at it.  Now, people who know me realize that I am more than a bit of a preener.  I like being in the spotlight, I admit it!  But I am here to say that I honestly didn't think about how public our whole build and home were going to be.  But it has been pretty fun!

(Our very public porch pouring)

So, I loved every minute of it.  We drove by the house daily on our way to dance class and often dropped off the appropriate kids only to return and just watch the house go up.  Owen and I were in raptures (Sam mostly did his homework and Lee was silent on the matter so we'll never know his opinion) and while I felt like somewhat of a stalker, I loved pulling over on the side of the road to eat some cookies and watch my house go up.  The day they put on the trusses for the roof was particularly cool.  The whole process was way fun for me and I am happy to say that I learned a lot too.  You could say that the house and I grew together. (Yeah, that was pretty lame, but sometimes you gotta go for the pun.)

In any case, in a matter of about 3-4 weeks we went from this . . .

to this . . .  

. . . and finally to this!

And to think, it's all sitting on its feet!