Thanks to our wonderful iphones (guess who is dreaming of the iphone 4 already) I have some footage of the digging / concreting work on site...
The Slab Work
Drilling and digging the trenches...
Concreting the trenches...
So awesome to watch this work happening... I don't expect everyone to find it riveting viewing - but for us it is such a relief that tangible progress is being made on this dream of building our home! No longer is it "yet more delays" that had us watching our block of land sitting untouched while we waited and waited for action...
Looking ahead, the actual build may have more delays yet. (hmmm do I be realistic or optimistic!?) However, at least WE CAN FINALLY SEE PROGRESS!!!! Horray!!!! Its hard to believe that its actually happening - the ground floor of the house is nearly in place and we can walk around the slab perimeter and start to get a perspective of the space...
Hello to all the wonderful friends, family and visitors who are stopping by to read this blog... I want to start by saying how much it means to me to have your presence beside me (in the virtual world :) on this journey. Building Sanctuary
The past week has seen the Building Sanctuary facebook page reach over 100 'fans'. This is so encouraging. Now I don't expect everyone to understand my facination with Social Media lol - but it goes hand-in-hand with gratitude for those who support me. That said - a big THANK YOU to HG for officially being the momentus '100th fan' on facebook.
I've had quite a busy week. Work and family commitments has meant that I am only just now uploading and sharing the exciting construction photos of the past several days.
So posts from here will be a 'feast of photos' to catch up... YAY!
To catch up - 1st June 2010 was DAY 33 on the construction timeline.
Up to then, our site had been continually rained on... The extremely wet soil and pooling of water around the plumbing meant that the construction work completely stalled. There were ditches of water everywhere...
By Day 33, our wonderful builders stepped in and dug trenches to help drain out the crazy pooling of water... I think a pump was even involved to get rid of the water...
The result was the soil drying out enough for the next stage of the slab to happen... What a relief!
DAY 36 (4th June 2010)
This Friday was one of the most exciting for a while. I turned up early to visit the site and what do I see but trucks and men on site working away... Soooo good to see. I walked around taking photo after photo - who knows what they thought? But I was not going to miss capturing this wonderful wonderful step :) Here is a few of the many I took...
They were digging the 2m deep holes for the piering and also trenches all across the house site. The drilling machines were awesome to watch...
The other part they were digging out was the trenches. These trenches ran around the edge of the house plot and also across the site. The long mesh pieces (that had been delivered to site way back on DAY 11) were placed in these trenches.
I will continue this story soon... can only do this post in bits and pieces ahhh...
Yesterday (Day 13) we got the weekly contact call from our Site Supervisor (SS). My paraphrase of his information to me follows:
When the guys went to work on site (concreting preparation etc) they found the ground was too wet to bring machines on to the land or do the work... All due to the lovely downpour of rain we had received the afternoon before. So the guy said he was not going to come back until Tuesday or Wednesday of next week to try again. This would give it enough time to dry out (IF we didn't get more heavy rain in the meantime).
So our SS said to the guy 'I don't care if you have other jobs on - come back and do this job first!'
Hopefully this actually happens... Nevertheless, its was nice to hear our SS placing emphasis on getting our place done sooner than later!
So basically no more action on site until next Tuesday (hopefully not later than that).
I'm trying to take this in my stride and be positive... We've waited soooooo long for the construction process to start - one week will not hurt us... And besides, its due to rain, (one of my favourite things in the world) so I can't be grumpy at rain... I just hope it decides to keep its activities to being lightly refreshing rather than huge downpours over the next week... Thats my prayer :))) But I also surrender to this as something that is completely out of my control.... (can you sense my impatience and my mental attempts to keep it in check haha)
I will aim to post some 'backstories' in the meantime, to keep myself busy :)
Oh - and just so you know - I have added a SANCTUARY QUOTE from Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events at the very bottom of my blog page... I love this movie... and its message of "making a sanctuary together" has always stayed with me...
