Basement?......Check!

Talk about stressful! Since they got the foundations poured a couple of weeks ago, the weather has been less than cooperative. In fact, it's been awful. We've had tons of rain, not quite Biblical amounts, but lots of it and we've been getting it every day. Last week, it rained steadily for 2 days. With the state of our "driveway" and lacking the funding to improve it, we've been  really worried about how long we'd have to wait until Bob was able to get the concrete trucks and pumper truck up to the house. The ground up there just turns into this very slick, messy goo that bogs down all but the best 4-wheel drive pickups. They tell us it's all the clay in the soil. With guests coming later this year, we've been worried that if we didn't get the basement poured soon, we'd be so far behind with the framing that we wouldn't be ready for them. So, this morning when Carol answered the phone and found Bob on the other end, we weren't expecting good news.
Well folks, we were wrong! Bob and his crew had somehow managed to cajole a couple of heavily laden trucks up the driveway and had them pour their expensive loads into the forms the guys had waiting for them. We have a basement! Well, okay, all we have is basement walls - Bob won't get them back to do the floors until everything dries out some more. But, at least he can start framing the rest of the house on top of the walls. The inspector is coming on Thursday to check out the drainage and waterproofing. Assuming it's all good, he will give them the Okey-Dokey to go ahead and backfill around the basement. Then the real work can get started. The framing is much less dependent on the weather so we are hopeful that everything will progress smoothly and we can get back on schedule.
We'll get up and take some pictures in the next day or two and post 'em up here.

A good foundation to build on

The long weekend started with a trip up to our new place. Bob, our building contractor, calls everyday to report his progress and Friday's call brought the news that the foundation pour had gone well on Thursday and we should have a basement poured by the middle of next week! We were on our way to check it out. We have been getting a fair amount of rain and the driveway was a little greasy. Just before we got to the house, another truck coming down the hill, had to back up out of our way. It was Louise and Brian, the people we had bought the land from. It was the first time we had met them, face to face. We chatted for a while before they left and we carried on up to the house site.

Carol had been up last weekend while I was in Edmonton and saw the excavation, but it was the first time I had seen it. This time, it even had some concrete in it! The foundation stepped down the hill, I guess to ensure that the footings are below the frostline. It was very exciting to see the first "concrete" evidence that our house was going to be here, and that it was going to happen soon now!

We have a hole in the ground

The title for this post is self-explanatory - finally, excavation has started and we now have a basement-sized hole in the ground where a house will be!

Last Thursday, I motorcycled to Edmonton to visit my Mum, son Justin, daughter-in-law Nadine, and Harlee, my 7 month old granddaughter. The weather forecast was promising and Carol needed the car back in Kamloops, so it made sense to take the bike. I had a super ride out, seeing several bears, mountain sheep and a variety of deer to add to the spectacular scenery of the Rocky Mountains. It was cool and drizzling all the way until the final 90 kms. The wind then became very strong and switched around to come from the south, bringing a 12*C jump in temperature and clear blue skies for the last hour of my trip. It was great to spend a few days with my family and get to know Harlee better. I hadn't seen her since she was less than a week old, last October.
Carol had stayed in Kamloops as she was attending a "timing clinic" as part of her preparation to be a volunteer at the Canada Western Summer Games, being held here early in August. She will be an official at the pool events, an area in which she is very qualified to work. The clinic ran first thing on Saturday morning after which she was picking up Alex and going up to Barnhartvale to see if Bob had managed to get started on the basement. He had! It is not really a giant hole as the house will have a daylight, walk-out basement. It sits on a gentle slope so the front will be at "finish grade" and the back of the house will be dug into the hill.

I realize that the pictures are not very exciting - Carol standing in a hole next to a pile of dirt - but it's what it represents that makes it exciting. The actual work on the house has started! Yay!

Finally, the weather is cooperating, and we received a beautiful, warm, sunny weekend to enjoy. And enjoy we did! Lunchtime on Sunday, we packed up a bunch of hot dogs and all the fixings, picked up Alex and headed up to Gull Lake Ranch.

Joey looking for a handout - Carol and Alex enjoy a hot dog

No work had happened since our last visit  :(  but that was kind of expected, as Bob was on vacation until the 6th of May. Hopefully, it will get going with a vengeance after that. But back to our wienie roast...
Although we started out in sweaters and jackets, it soon became apparent that t-shirts would be the order of the day. I (Mike) was in shorts trying to get some rays on my very white (embarrassingly so!) legs. It was glorious! We started a fire with all the wood Carol had prepared last week and quickly got down to roasting. Why is it that food tastes so much better when it is cooked outdoors? Anyway, a few "dogs" later, Alex and Carol set off for the old well site, taking Joey along to try and burn off some of the energy she seems to be filled with whenever we're up here. It was on the return trip that Alex, who had set off on his own at a running pace, came across a big brown bear. Well, actually it was a Black Bear, Ursus Americanus, but it was big and brown....but I digress!

Alex enjoying the warm, sunny day

The bear, who was down by the lower fence line, looked up to assess what creature had dared to come and disrupt his solitude. Apparently, Alex didn't come off as much of a threat, as the big guy quickly returned to browsing for lunch before disappearing into the woods. At least that Alex's story - as Carol and I never saw the bear at all!
We both think it's kind of cool to have those animals on and around our property. The stories go that if you have dogs, the bears will leave you alone and you might never see them. So, with Joey and a future pack-mate, we hope we never have to resort to defending ourselves with our firearms - but, we will keep them handy, just in case!
About then, a couple showed up on their side-by-side ATV, having also seen the bear. (so I guess we have to believe Alex  :)  Lesley had been in to KPA Printers, where we printed her daughter's wedding invitations, so she was no stranger and she quickly introduced us to her husband, Colin. They came well-equipped and offered us a beer. We declined as we were planning on leaving shortly and I won't drink if I'm driving  :)

Carol and Joey by the fire before lunch

They spent quite a while chatting and story-telling about their own house-building adventures. They commented on the beautiful view we will have from our place. They suggested we go and check out Lance and Jackie's (our realtor, Jackie Brommeland) new place. They had just come from there and it had been their first visit since Christmas, before Jackie and Lance had moved into the new house. Lesley was really impressed with it, commenting on the concrete floors - the entire house (all 4,500 square feet of it) is heated with in-floor, hydronic radiant heat. They have the floors finished in a variety of ways and they look and feel amazing. I doubt that budget will allow us to do the same with our house, but it sounds very nice.
After the fire died down, we smothered it with sand from 2 of the sandbags in the back of the truck and headed for home. It had been the best day at the new property (except, perhaps, for the day Carol and Lea rode the place on horseback). Hopefully, next time we're up, it will look much different.