a little bit at a time gets a little bit done, but a whole weekend dedicated to a project is better

[kareina]

In the week since my last post we managed to work on the earth cellar some evenings after work, but others we didn't have the energy to turn on the cement mixer. Even when we did we never managed to do more than one batch of cement in an evening (50 kg before adding the water). Even so, we managed to get the walls to grow somewhat. However, this weekend we finally made what feels like real progress--we worked all day yesterday and today--at least five batches of cement yesterday (we lost count), and four today (this time I counted the bags before carrying them to the trash can).

Our house came with several large cement rings, just sitting in the field taking up space. Therefore we decided to put them to good use and incorporate them into the earth cellar. Two of them set into the interior walls to make built-in cupboards, and the third will be the doorway. Yes, we will have a round Hobbit-door! Yes, it is small and we will have to duck to get in and out, but it will be so worth it.

So today we set in the first ring, into the back wall.



How did we get it there? Well, the tractor couldn't drive right up to the back wall, since the side walls come a bit too far for it to really fit, so we extended the fork lift by adding a log (bark still attached). Then he inserted the log into the ring, lifted it, and carried it in. The hard part was maneuvering the tractor into the right angle to bring the ring forward into place, without hitting that roof we have over the hole.

The above photo was taken around 14:00 today, then we built up the wall around it a bit, here is a cute photo of lord_kjar doing that:



The way we are working is that we build up the wall a bit, then fill in gravel behind it, or, where there is a wide gap between the wall and the ground we put gravel in a thin (8 to 15 cm wide) band next to the wall, and put ordinary dirt behind it. Right now this is easy--put two shovels side by side to mark where we want the dividing line between dirt and gravel, then use one of the trowels to pull dirt down from the sides of the hole, then step on it a few times to hold it in place, and carefully take one of the shovels out to scoop up more gravel, and put it in between the dirt and the wall. Repeat as needed til the space behind the wall is full up to the current top of the wall.

However, fairly soon, we will need to start bringing dirt back in from the pile in the field that came out of the hole in the first place, since the hole is much wider at the top than at the bottom. The plan is to back the rings with a bit of plywood that is designed to be outside in all sorts of weather, then continue filling gravel and dirt behind it.

Once we had built up the wall on each side of the first ring as high as it is a good idea to go in a single session we decided to turn our attention to prepping the nest for the second ring. At first the plan was just to cement the large rocks that will be underneath it together, and then add the ring itself on the next session.

However, once we got that done we still had a reasonable amount of concrete left from that batch (which we had already decided would be the last for the day, and set the concrete mixer running with just water in it to clean it). So we decided to "just bring in the ring and see how good a fit the nest is already and how much more concrete it will need".

The second ring rests on the rocks that are currently furthest out from the back wall (we haven't added new large rocks to outline the rest of the walls yet, because we knew we would need to use the tractor to bring in the rings, and the tractor needs room to maneuver). This means that we could have used the fork lift without the log extender, expect for the fact that the ring is on the side wall, and there is no way the tractor would have fit at the right angle to reach that, even if we had no walls.

So instead we wrapped a chain around the ring and hung the ring from the underside of the forklift. This meant he could drive it over the nest, and I could spin it till the angle was correct to lower it into place. The second ring has had a hard life before we got it--there are three places were there are holes in the concrete (but the rebar reinforcement is still bridging those holes). The holes are all on the same edge, and evenly distributed around the ring. At some point in the past someone had patched those holes with chunks of rock and concrete. One of the three holes was still fully patched, but the patch was wider than the ring, so it protrudes both out and into the ring.

Initially we had thought to put the patched hole up, and an open one on the bottom, but when we set the ring into the nest we discovered that it leaned slightly more than we wanted it to, but at least it leaned the better direction--towards the ground, not the room, and it didn't come close to touching the underlying rock at the center back of the nest. Therefore we picked the ring back up, and rotated it till the patched and protruding part was on bottom, and tried again. Now it leaned too far the opposite direction, and the protrusion rested on the rock at the middle back just high enough that the ring was no longer in contact with the upper right side of the nest.

So we lifted it again, and hit the protrusion with my rock hammer till some of the rock and concrete patch broke out, and tried again. Closer, but still a bit too much lean, so up again, break off a bit more, and set it down again. This time it was nearly level, so we hoisted it again, added concrete under it, and set it back down one final time--now it sits perfectly level. The last of that batch of concrete was just enough to add a few more rocks to fill in the nest a bit more around the ring, and we could feel like we accomplished something with our day:





Of course, building the earth cellar isn't our only home improvement project in progress, and we are still working on some of them in fits and spurts in-between progress on the cellar. One of the other projects has been some changes to the yard immediately in front of the house--some changes to the slope of the land so we no longer get huge mud puddles (one of which was right on the walkway to the door!), and moving the walkway itself further from the house (who puts a walkway right were any snow sliding off the roof will land on it?).

The original walkway consisted of square concrete blocks, set two wide, in a straight line to the door. We thought it would be nice to have a curved walkway, so at this point the plan is to use both some of those square blocks, and some of the nice little cobblestones lord_kjar's parents had left over from when they did the landscaping at their house.

So far I have placed the square blocks and some of the cobblestones down on top of the ground, to see how I like it, and I do:



(You can still see where the original walkway was--the brown stripe in front of the house--see how it had to jog a bit to the right to get to the porch.) From here the plan is to get the other cobblestones set out, to be certain that we actually have enough, and, assuming we do, then dig away the underlying grass so that we can set the walk way in level with the ground surface. In our copious free time. Like the earth cellar, it will be good to accomplish this before we start getting freezing temps again.


In other news I had a really weird dream Friday night. For reasons I do not understand my brother in law was looking at a sewing project in progress of mine (note that he is someone I have only seen once every few/many years and then not for long, since my sister lives in Seattle), and then he picked up my good sewing shears and started indicating that he was going to cut the loose threads hanging off of it, which made me uncomfortable enough, but then he started actually sliding the blade of the scissors against the fabric itself, right over the seam, slicing both. I started wrestling with him for control of the scissors, and was then woken up by a scream. I had been sleeping with my hand resting on lord_kjar's arm, and when I tried to grab the scissors I actually clenched my hand, driving my nails into his arm, and pulling with all of my strength on his arm. oops! Needless to say, no sooner than his screams woke me and I let go and started apologizing and explaining about the dream. He was very understanding, and we both went straight back to sleep. But it is a good thing I wear my fingernails so short, or I think I would actually have done him damage.

Tomorrow linda_linsefors arrives to spend her summer vacation here, so we will entertain her, in part, by letting her help with the projects in progress.