Being Makers, Not Consumers
The second, lower, retaining wall is in place, and the backfill has been compacted. Now there’s a nice level path between the walls — it should look quite nice with some potted plants, don’t you think? As well as the retaining wall, the guys have laid down the first layer of wood on the ADU… Continue reading Start Building
How’s the house? Here’s a picture of the main house location, taken a couple days ago: As you can plainly see, the foundation is nonexistent, and the garage has yet to materialize. The ground floor is failing to come along nicely, and the supports for the upper floor have not appeared. The elevator, stairs,… Continue reading How’s the House?
Some more concrete has been poured, and the foundation for the ADU is now curing. So nice! Not only this, but there’s also a pad for a big shed, so maybe we can start storing some things indoors. W00t!
Today, I went up to the property to accept delivery of a new electric golf cart. We had one at the old house, and we used it to transport the bins up the hill to the street every week, as well as for carting stuff around between the outbuildings. It had a towing attachment, which… Continue reading Concrete Progress
We visited our construction site today. Remember a few months ago when our original geologist resigned because he didn’t think we were taking him seriously about the ground being unstable, and how a pier depth of 20 feet wasn’t going to be good enough? Well, earlier this week we finally got sign-off from our new… Continue reading You Want Progress?
Our builder has started drilling holes for all the foundation piers for the ADU. These piers will be different from the retaining wall piers, in that they won’t have half ton steel girders at their cores — just rebar and concrete. The rebar is supposed to show up this week, so right now the area… Continue reading Boring (not boring)
With all the steel on site, we can start putting the piers in place for the retaining walls. Note, these retaining walls are not even for the ADU, they're to stabilize the site of the main house. Also, they're much more extensive than the "retaining walls" that were in place before the fire. So, our… Continue reading Let It Pour
It's been a long, tedious process, but we're finally allowed to construct! There are an awful lot of permits that one needs to rebuild a house. First, there was the debris removal permit. Then, the permit for the temporary power pole. Then the septic inspection, the fire safety inspection, and the geological inspection as well… Continue reading We Have Permission!
You know how if a story takes place in someplace that's been continuously occupied by people for hundreds or thousands of years, there's a decent chance that one of the characters is going to dig up some forgotten treasure? Yeah, so that happened. The meadow where Lise used to practice archery and where nothing has… Continue reading Buried Treasure
Our cucumber vines are bearing many fruit. So many that, despite eating the cucumbers in salads every day, we still have a lot. It must be pickle time! Today, I picked 8 pounds of cucumbers and processed them into 8 quarts of sweet pickles. Recipe and procedure below the fold… Brine 4 cups sugar 8… Continue reading Sweet Pickles!
The Quintana-Beitzel Coprosperity Sphere 