Reynolds Kamakawiwiole and his wife led us in a traditional blessing of the house site
Walking into the blessing
Blessing the site
VIDEO: Circle at the blessing
Joe and his mini-dozer and Alan, arriving to dig the footings for the foundation
Michael <pronounced mi-kah-el> likes operating the dozer controls (when it is not running)
All the footing trenches laid out and drawn on the ground.
A log serving as a stool, and a generator serving as a table.
The entrance-to-be
Breaking ground!
A backhoe is not a precision instrument, especially not through rocks and roots - trench is messy.
It's tricky to dig these trenches precise through rock, but Joe can do it
One corner of the pad is especially rocky - gotta jackhammer
VIDEO
Gravel truck arrives - it has to back up the entire way from the highway to the house pad!
The completely dug site
Entrance-to-be
Chickens come down to investigate the gravel
The big sugi to the east
The avo below the pad
Ed lines all the footing trenches with compacted gravel
Building the framing (forms) for the foundation
Cement truck arrives. It has to back up all the way from the highway to the pad, barely makes it!
Two inches to spare between the truck and the gardenias.
The truck can't get close enough, so a concrete pump pumps it through a hose to the pad.
The framing, right before the pour
All the rebar and bolts precisely in place, before the pour
Pouring the footer for the lanai
It takes an awful lot of concrete
Pour is finished, some finish work to clean it up
Removing the forms
Looks messy, but everything seems to be in place
The neighborhood kids wanted to climb in the container
The first shipping container arrives with parts for our house
Moving all the materials down to the housepad, one truckload at a time, took 4 people 5 days.
Beams with joinery, cover it with a tarp and hope for the best!
8x8' wall panels take four people to lift
Second container arrives
This one has all the roofing, floor panels, doors...
Looking down at the housepad, already getting crowded with tarp-covered piles
Some of these beams are Really heavy
The foundation was built with nuts on the cement-splattered bolts. It took around a day to get them off the bolts and tidy up.
Jim and i cleaning up the foundation bolts
Very first bit of wood on the foundation! These pre-drilled posts are part of the "pony wall" between foundation and sills.
Stack of pony walls ready to lay out
Laying out the pony walls
Cutting bolts, drilling holes, epoxy to hold them.
sparks!
Measure each spot to drill a hole in the pony walls
Measuring each spot
Drilling each spot
In some places, the bolt collides with struts
...so we had to carve out the studs or even remove some stud nails
Deb showing the parts of the plywood that need removing
Almost done with the pony walls
Our very first real board of the house - a sill under the kitchen!
and it even fits well
9 floor panels on the first floor
getting ready to roll a sheet of plastic over the floor for rain protection
had to stand on a precarious lumber pile to photo the whole footprint
plastic rolling out
making the trap doors in the floor panels - perhaps my first time ever using a japanese saw
one trap door complete, family (including chicken) comes down to see progress
all the main floor panels in place, covered to protect it from the rain which was super heavy all November
we don't quite have a house yet, but we do now have an "under the house"
