June 15 - First Floor Walls Are Up

This morning starting out with the Amish crew assembling more main level exterior walls. There was an issue that popped up....again. There was no detail in the plans as to how the steps up from the garage were to be constructed. This involved cutting into the engineered I-joists and building a 2x4 closet frame in the basement to support the cutout area. A jack type post will also be installed in the basement in the coming days for proper support.  Anyway, we have three steps into the house from the garage that wouldn't have happened (not today anyway) unless I had said something. The Amish crew leader was oblivious to this step issue. It had just not been discussed with him prior to this. The floor plans didn't show any steps. There is over 20 inches of height difference between the garage floor and the main level of the house. Hmmm.

About 9:30 or so, the man that has done most all my digging work showed up with his trenching machine. He told me that in the middle of the night he awoke thinking that he needed to get my water line trenching done today because it was going to rain soon. So, he showed up unannounced. He wasn't thinking about the fact that we also wanted him to bury the power cable at the same time.....and we hadn't even thought about buying the cable yet.

So, here I am on the phone with our builder again explaining to him that we needed to get our act together and buy our power cable today. We located the needed cable at the REC in Albia. Long story short. By 3 pm and with my checking account $1167 lighter just to buy the cable, both the water line and power cable were trenched 350 feet from the top of the lot to the back side of the house.

Trenching pics...

A lot was accomplished today. Right before 5 pm, it starting pouring rain and the Amish packed up for the weekend. This is what the house looks like after 3 days of framing work.