The Big Pour -- Part 3 of 3 -- Weeks 14 - 16

This is the 3rd of a series & I can't figure out how to reverse the order so it's your choice whether you read these postings from the bottom up or the top down. Just look to the right to see the other two for today. I'm going to try to get all the concrete pictures in here & there are a lot of them, so I hope things don't mess up on me again before I finish.

Okay so the forms were ready to go on Monday, the 15th. Why did they wait to pour the foundation until Friday, the 19th? Well, first there had to be a post-tension inspection. Dave had to give a piece of paper from that guy to the Pima County inspector to give us permission to pour. Everybody signed off and we were good to go.

But wait, there was one more little thing. Down here the dirt under the foundation must be termite treated before the slab is poured ... & the concrete has to be poured within 24 hours of the termite control chemical being put down.

So the concrete guys got there bright & early on Friday morning & I assume that the termite guys came the night before as they usually do. These pictures are from Friday during the pour & Saturday after it.

What happens in a big pour like this? I keep calling it that because it was like pouring concrete for 2 houses instead of just one, so it took a long time.

First the trucks line up on the road. Dave said we had 17 trucks for our project.

Then the trucks back into the site.

They load the concrete into the pumper truck.

And the pumper truck pumps it into the foundation. This is what I first saw when I arrived at the site on Friday morning.

Yes, that's a very impressive pumper. Here's another shot of it.

This is the concrete company. Sierra Vista is about 100 miles from the site. It's where Ft. Huachuca is located. But I was told they didn't come that far. The company has a concrete plant much closer.

This is the boss of the crew in the cowboy hat. It is Arizona, after all.

This is the crew pouring the concrete into Trout's shop. You can see the concrete coming out of the hose on the left.

The thickest concrete here is usually about 8 inches. This looks thicker than that to me, but Dave did say there would be places where it would reach 10 inches.

Here the crew is using boards to even out the concrete with the top of the forms.

The second smoothing is done by hand with a long-handled trowel.

Another troweling tool used for the house floor looks like a big fan.

This is what the troweling machine does to the surface.

The final troweling in the house to prepare the floor for staining is done by hand.

Here's what it looked like the next day. It's common for stained & polished floors here to have cuts in them. They are partly for design purposes & partly to stop the progress of any cracking. We have cuts in the shop & garage floors but not the house. We wanted the house floor to be consistently smooth there.

This was a very large crew. I counted at least 15 guys. Nobody did much standing around that I could see. I took some time to run to the closest store & buy cookies for everyone. They definitely deserved them. I understood they planned to grill their lunch before they left that day. I didn't stay late enough to see if they actually did.

These ones are fine-tuning the perimeter in the guest room/entry/office area.

As they were doing this, someone else cut expansion joints into the garage (& shop) floors.

The perimeter of the house & the wall between the garage & the shop needed to have bolts in the concrete for attaching the framing. This guy looks like he's in a rice paddy, but he's really setting the bolts.

And here some are the next day. The break in them is where the double doors are from the garage to the shop.

You may remember an earlier series of photos I did from left to right facing the house. Well here they are again. Each time I do them, I hope it will be easier to see the house develop.

This is the guest room with the guest bath & the great room beyond.

This is the entry with the great room beyond.

Here's the office with the kitchen beyond.

And here's the laundry with the master bedroom beyond.

This is the garage with the master bath beyond.

Here's more garage with the courtyard beyond.

Here's the shop work area with the shop bath and office beyond.

And finally, here's the shop parking area.

Week 13 -- Lots of Homework

This week started with a meeting with the builders to firm up decisions previously made & to make some we couldn't make until now. They needed our input before Trout left for WA. It turned out that I needed to do lots of homework picking fixtures for the baths -- especially the faucets -- after he left. After months of online as well as brick & mortar showroom research, I decided to try to get everything from Kohler. It started with the kitchen sink faucet. Well, I guess it really started with the kitchen sink.

Over a year ago, Trout decided that he wanted the biggest sink possible. He saw this one in a local showroom & it was love at first sight. The normal sink is 33" wide. This one is 43" wide. It will be cobalt blue. The actual sample is darker than this looks online. This is a picture from Kohler's fabulous website. The model is K-5850-3 Cantina.

We planned for a single-hole sink as is shown in this picture, but then we decided to install a Reverse Osmosis system for drinking water. That means we either need a 2nd hole in the sink or to mount the RO faucet on the countertop. We decided to go with the 3-hole option for this sink. One hole will be for the drinking water faucet, one for the regular faucet & the last will be for a soap dispenser. I always thought soap dispensers were a little too high toned for me, but oh well...

That brings us back to the faucet. Trout wanted the one with the longest reach I could find since the sink is so big. That turned out to also be a Kohler product & down the Kohler road I went. This is what we chose -- a K-10433 Forte pullout faucet followed by a K-1893-C soap dispenser.

Having selected this Kohler Forte style, I used it just about everywhere else I could. This is going to sound like a Kohler commercial, but of all the manufacturers I considered, they seemed to be the best at having things that followed through from room to room. This K-10217-4 Forte tall faucet is the one we will have for our master bath sinks. The one for the guest bath will be the same except shorter.

We will not have vessel sinks like this. Our sinks will be very large (21x17) oval Talavera ones. We are likely to have the faucets mounted off to the side rather than in the center on the back side of the sink as is normal. The faucets will be mounted on the countertops because there are no holes in the Talavera sinks.

I'm almost afraid to post the toilets & master bath tub because the online color is so off the sample. It's called Sunlight & shows up very yellow, but the cast iron sample is much more muted. In fact, it is exactly the same as the color of the white, even the solid white, Talavera tiles we will be using in the baths. I am a little iffy about this, though, & intend to see a fixture for real, not just a sample or online before they are ordered. Both house toilets will be like this K-3489 Cimarron. This K-839 Maestro tub is a drop-in one for the master bath, but the one in the guest bath will be the same color if not the same style.

This doesn't look like much for all the hours I spent on it, but most of the time was involved in trying to educate myself about what was really needed where. After a couple of calls to Kohler, I think I got it straight, but I hope our builders or the plumbers, the Duchenes, correct any ignorant decisions I may have made. We still have to finish up the selection process for the Reverse Osmosis system, the utility sinks in the shop & garage, Trout's shop bath & the laundry.

Speaking of the Duchenes, I spelled their name wrong last time. They are of Mexican heritage, but according to the genealogical research one of their cousins is doing, they are descended from a French soldier who came to Mexico with Maximillian & decided to stay, so their last name is French, not Spanish. Here are 3 generations of Duchenes fixing a pipe that the pad prep guys broke while filling in after the rough plumbing.

We went out to the lot on Tuesday after our meeting with the builders on Monday. As we were driving home, Trout, who rarely shows any excitement about anything, finally admitted he was getting a little stoked about the project. Here he is talking to our builder, Dave, about some construction issues with the shop.

Part of what they were talking about was how the columns down the center of it are going to be supported & what needed to be done with those that are at the walls. Here are some before & after pictures of the footings for those columns. The first 2 are center columns & the last one is a wall column.

Since we're talking about structural issues, this is a picture of the footing for one of the porch posts. It obviously doesn't need to have the strength of the shop columns.

With the forms in & the dirt flattened out the house shape is starting to be a little more understandable. So here's a series going from left (the guest room) to right (the shop) as if you were facing the front of the house.

The guest room with the guest bath & the great room beyond.

The entrance with the great room beyond. The guest room is to the left & the office is to the right.

The office with the kitchen & nook beyond.

The laundry with the master bedroom beyond.

The garage with the master bath beyond.

The rest of the garage with the courtyard beyond.

The working area of the shop with the shop bath & office beyond.

The parking area of the shop.

Ending with a view picture is usually fun. This will be the view from Trout's shop office. Unfortunately, the shop office is not designed so that he can sit on the toilet in the shop bath, open the door & see out the windows. I'm sure if it was he would.