Howell Cabin

On Wednesday we started mixing concrete and pouring it to fill our footing blocks and columns. Mom and Bri came for a visit ... and brought milkshakes! I had heard that you really  have to support concrete forms well, because the stuff is heavy and, well, liquid. But I didn't learn it well enough; our posts aren't exactly plumb. They're close enough that the column load should pass through them without trouble, but they look dumb. It took us two days to mix and pour all of the concrete. We had to bring another ten bags up the hill to be sure we didn't run out. I think we ended up using more than a ton.

On Saturday , we showed up with a concrete mixer and a rock auger to set rebar into the bedrock. But, it turned out I had misremembered where the bedrock was exposed: it was exposed at the first site we considered, but the new site, set down the hill thirty feet, was covered with soil. On Sunday , we rented a cute little digger from Home Depot in Issaquah and towed it up the hill. When we got there after lunch, Eiot asked for the keys to drive it off the trailer. Oops. The keys are still in Issaquah. Three hours later, we're digging. Because of the late start, we did quite a lot more digging on Monday . We didn't get very far before we hit bedrock after all. Here Eliot's trying to make a flat spot to place our footing blocks on. After twenty minutes of bashing away at this rock -- and it was a soft rock! -- he said, "I now have a greater appreciation for the people who built the pyramids." On Tuesday and Wednesday , we built a jig to level and...