The home stretch...

More work on the never-ending form-building project... getting closer to pouring concrete (really!)

Chopping up a perfectly-good brand-new eight-dollar garden hose from Walmart into 10-inch lengths. Whew, that was a lot of hyphens, but I'll do what it takes to make a sentence grammatically-correct. These are going to be the prophylactic that protects my allthread form ties from the concrete. I got the cheapest hose I could find, not just because I have an unnatural aversion to spending an extra five dollars when I don't have to, but because it will kink easily. Normally, that would be a source of endless frustration and five-dollar-remorse, but in this case it's going to be a good thing. After I pull the threaded rod ties from the wall, the plan is to clamp onto an edge of the hose with vise-grips and twist-and-pull to remove it from the forms... if it kinks, it should collapse and pull out of the hole... that's the idea, anyway. I give it 50/50 odds that I'll be eating these words later. 

That's a whole lot of form ties.

Shawna pointed out this little guy hopping around on the hill behind me, eating bugs as I built forms. He was tiny, about the size of a golf ball. I don't know why I assume "he", but that's just how he struck me, so I'm going with it. Anyway... he was quite charming and brightened my day.

Getting closer... this is a garage that would make the Borg proud.

Just one more row of bolts to get through the back face of the forms. This has ended up being a tremendous amount of work; it would have gone a LOT quicker if I had someone working with me. As it was, for each of these, I had to climb out from behind the wall, hop over the three-foot forms, crawl under the scaffolding, hammer the rod through the forms, hammer the next one so that it's tight against the back form, crawl back under the forms, climb back behind the wall, line up the next one with the hole, and repeat. About a hundred times. My iPhone has this fun feature that tracks my health. Apparently, the number of steps you take in a day correlates to health. According to that metric, I am very very healthy today: I took about 14,000 steps. That translates to an average of thirty steps per minute, every minute, for eight hours. Over and under and climbing and repeat... I am tired. And happy. Very very Tired and Happy.

Another view of the forms. I'm getting so excited I can hardly contain myself. I'm about to blow concrete all over this thing!

Music 

I've had Dave Matthews Band on the brain for a few days now, specifically, Two Step.

Here's the normal-length version: Two-Step

And the extended, apparently-the-best-live-version-ever version: Best-Ever-Live-Version-of-Two-Step-in-All-Of-Its-14-Minute-Glory

Closing in the forms.

Another day of work. ...except I can't exactly call it "work", because I absolutely love what I'm doing... maybe I should call it another day of creating. Yeah... that's much better. Words have meaning, and I need to use the right ones. Creating. Building. Shaping my world like I'm a force of nature.

All of the studs are in place for the air face of the retaining wall. This went slower than it should have, because I had to dismantle some previous work to do it right. I had put these studs in place with duplex toenails, but I needed to use screws to get them in exactly the right spot. Also, pulling toenails is a complete pain in the ass. 

Isn't this an ominous photo? Chucked up with a 18" auger bit and ready to do some serious drilling!!

Here's the first of the form ties in place. The auger-bit from the previous photo made the hole between the form boards. I used these anchors to line up the studs on the back side of the wall. Mostly, I just wanted to see at least a couple of these in place to feel like I'm making some progress.

Here's my little gastropod-mollusk-buddy for the day... I think he's cute.

Nice shell!!

A return to awesome materials... I've been obsessing over form release materials. Yes, I need to get out more. The usual hillbilly method is to use red-diesel, but I am going to re-use the boards in the house, and I don't want to be breathing diesel fumes for the next few years. I was also considering buying 5 gallons of vegetable oil from Costco... but the silly part is: this 5-gallon bucket of form release compound cost $35... cheaper than any other alternative. I feel silly for spending any time worrying about this part of the project. Just get the right stuff, get it done, and move on. 

Building a cradle for newborn concrete. Getting closer to the pour!!!

Sound track: Live

Finally... done with the board form pattern! I knocked out a lot of tedious work done this weekend... for the form ties, I cut 180 feet of half-inch allthread  into 90 two-foot pieces with a Sawzall, then welded a nut onto the end of each one. Then I ripped about 75-100 more little sticks for the board-form texture areas.

Saturday was the prep-cook equivalent of the building world. "Slicing" allthread for form ties and "dicing" lumber for form patterns...

Set up to give my little arc welder a workout.

This was a lot of good welding practice. My welds improved remarkably in the course of running 90 beads around the rod-to-nut joints, and I was able to start an arc pretty reliably without sticking by the end of this. I also like that this looks like a bouquet.

Here's the completed pattern on the big retaining wall. The blank area at the lower left is where the landing and first run of stairs to the loft will be attached to the wall. I think this is going to look great, and I'm glad to be putting in this much effort now. That said... I'm very glad to be done with this part!

With all of the boards in place, I could get started on bending and tying the rest of the rebar. I'm starting to feel like this is going to be a very stout garage.

Another section of wall reinforcing done. I got about 2/3 of the low walls done before I had used up all of the available daylight. I'm thinking the rest of the rebar work should go pretty quickly; these small walls have a lot of cuts and bends and measuring, where the retaining wall will have a lot of straight full bars with only one cut per run of horizontal rebar. I'm enjoying the rebar work; working with hand-powered tools, and sometimes just hands... it's very satisfying to be able to feel the steel bending and yielding. I've heard from people who put a lot of effort into developing grip strength that bending steel (usually nails, various bars, horseshoes, frying pans, etc.) develops a kind of strength that you can't get any other way, and I'm actually starting to see some truth in that with this rebar work. 

The board-form-finish phase is drawing to a close... thank god! I've just about had enough of these little sticks... just need to power through one more day then I'm done. 

This is one of those little areas that took more time than it should have... measuring and cutting each piece so it lines up just right. I'll be happy, later, that I put in this much effort, now.

This part is just ridiculous... I don't have ice or a refrigerator, but I do have a burbling creek! Negra-Modelo has never looked so good.

 My construction site has become more musical... this is a runner-up for the best-twelve-dollars-I've-ever-spent award. (Just behind the rebar-tying-tool, for those who are just tuning in...) And, yes... I had a choice between black and purple, and I chose purple. I'm entirely comfortable with that.

Here's the progress on the big retaining wall. I'm loving the way this looks. I hope I love it this much when it's cast in concrete!

The fun part of working with geologists (the guys who helped me with the slab pour) is that they point out cool stuff like fault traces in the steep earth slope you're going to retain with a concrete wall... it's the diagonal line running through the middle of the photo. Fun stuff!!!

Another fault trace. The jog in the middle of the frame is the fault line. An iron-oxide layer that got offset by about 4 inches. 

I took a walk after I ran out of boards for the retaining wall forms. Strolling down a pleasant country road and waving to passing cars, and came across this brick. I had seen it before, but it was long after we started calling Diablo, Diablo. I might have to hijack this brick and use it in our house somewhere... keystone for an arch over the fireplace mantle? ...still working on that one.

Another shot from my walk. This is the covered bridge on the road to our house. All kinds of ridiculous charm here!

The insects are settling in on the form work. I've seen a bunch of spiders, and this mosquito-hawk. Strangely, I'm thinking I'll have to incorporate some stained glass work into my project. Sort of on a roll here... and loving it!!!

I got a nice chunk of work done today, but first... let's talk about the food. I prepped some dutch-oven ingredients before heading out to the property - potatoes, salt, pepper, fermented garlic, and bay leaf:

The day is off to a good start.

Next up, putting in some more time on the table saw. I'm getting a rhythm down, and this part of the process is going pretty quickly.

Upon arrival at the property, I started the coals warming up, set the generator to work filling up the air compressor, and took a walk to pick a couple of handfuls of wild onions. These, along with beef broth and ham-hocks, are the makings for a little bit of awesome. I'm loving the dutch oven; after I got the coals going in the chimney-starter and spread in layers below and on the lid, the thing basically took care of itself for a couple of hours. The only time it got my attention was when a bit of heavenly aroma collided with my olfactory nerve. Just about zero effort after starting it up. 

...and a couple of hours later it was lunchtime! It doesn't look like anything too special, but some serious magic happened over those couple of hours. This was amazing food!

Lots of drama in the sky today, but enough sun filtering through to put me at risk of getting a tan... perfect!

 

I love the way this pattern is developing now that it is wrapping around the corners. I am excited about seeing this in concrete.

Another view of the day's work. The bit to the left is what I posted on Thursday... here it is in context! These small parts, where I have to measure and cut each board to fit, are sucking up a lot of time. I'm just about through those parts, and I'm ready to rock and roll on the finish work for the big retaining wall tomorrow.

I left some daylight on the table to take my daughter roller-skating. Somehow, this building project is infusing confidence into the rest of my life... I haven't had my feet strapped into anything that rolls or slides in over 20 years, but I thought, "sure, I'll just strap these things on and go for it!" And... I only landed on my ass once, and had an absolute blast with Coral. Life is good.

Chipping away at the form-building work... I had about two hours between meeting work commitments, a monthly board-of-directors meeting, and an intramural volleyball game, so I ran out to the property and put together another piece of the board-form puzzle. This is the pier between the garage doors. It actually takes quite a bit of attention and effort to create a pleasingly-random-but-uniformly-textured effect.

Uniformly-random; striving for a uniform texture without creating a defined pattern. The little returns around the corners are intended to give some depth to the finish, so it doesn't just look like a two-dimensional facade stuck to the face of the wall. Nothing looks more architecturally-horrible to me than a brick or rock wall facing that ends abruptly at a corner, and I really don't want to risk creating that effect here.

Another view... mostly because I like angles. It will be fun to compare this one side-by-side with the concrete wall when it's done.

Today was split between repaying some labor from the slab pour and working on my wall forms. The first half of the day was spent hauling mulch from a free pile of chipped redwood bark and edge-cuts... presumably from a lumber-milling operation. The mulch was actually pretty good stuff, especially considering the price! We made two trips to the mulch pile with two pickup trucks... probably moved around 6-8 cubic yards of the stuff and spread it in small piles around his back-yard orchard, and then had some awesome cheeseburgers and lemonade afterward. Something about doing a big chunk of hard work on a home-improvement project is immensely satisfying, whether or not it's your own project... I would be doing this for fun even if it wasn't in trade for his help on my concrete pour.

The second half of the day was spent on my concrete wall forms. I put most of the strips that I had ripped on Friday onto the forms. I borrowed a generator that was big-enough to run my air compressor, and the installation went a LOT quicker with a nail-gun. I think the end result looks fantastic... I can't wait to see it cast in concrete!

I feel like this part of the project is taking a long, LONG time, but I keep reminding myself that what I am doing now is actually the finish work... in my house, the structure is going to be the finish. What-you-see is what-it-is, and I'm front-loading the finish work... an honest building through and through. I couldn't do it this way if I was rushing through the foundation work to get to the first draw on my construction loan... I've said it before, but it is definitely worth repeating: I get to do it this way, because I'm doing it myself.

This sort of reminds me of the pixelated look of my daughter's Minecraft worlds... I think it looks really cool!

Another view of the forms... just for fun!