No Rest For The Weary

Friday May 3, 2019

This past week we had to make a rather big decesion. Upon knocking down the house we quickly discovered that the cement slab was not up to par! Code say slabs must be 3.5-4 inches thick. In the corner we were lucky to have 2.5. Knowing we were building a 2 story and this corner would have a lot of weight we thought we may need to take out all the cement and re-pour. We had 3 different contractor friends come take a look and they all agreed! This was NOT on our to do list!

Kory was able to rent a jack hammer that attaches to our skid steer Friday morning. He spent the day drilling holes that cracked the cement.  

Walking from our front room to the current kitchen there was a step up. That was the only part of the house that we had this weird step. Kory was able to talk to someone who lived in the house as a child. He told us that our current kitchen use to be a family room. The previous owner had several steps down kind of creating a theater seating. The new owners didn't like it so filled it with cement. Wow!

Kory was able to get the cement broken up on Friday. We also hauled off 3 trailers full of cement! Those were some heavy loads!

In the end we had 4 different slabs of concrete we removed!

May 4th, Saturday morning, all we had left was the cement slab over the cellar. 

Beneath the cement were old, 2x8's that were rotted and termite eaten. These 2x8's were the only thing holding up the ceiling down there. 

Linking a chain around the slab Kory was able to pull the cement off those old boards. 

This left us a bunch of rubble stuck to those old boards to take out. Every time we scooped up a shovel full we had too much debri falling into our fully stocked cellar.  

So the kids and I stopped and emptied it. 

We were kind of in a hurry to get all that cleaned up so we just stock piled everything on our kitchen table and surrounding area. 

My kitchen was sitting on that cement. We had to move it to the other side. There's no water hookups over here. This room will be our future office. I will be without a kitchen sink with running water for hopefully no more than a week. My plan is to wash dishes in the bathroom!

 Hunter was able to spend quite a bit of time on the skid steer this weekend! He has been so helpful in all of this mahem!

Brayden and Dad, taking a sledge hammer to the part the skid steer couldn't reach. 

It took a while but we finally got everything cleaned out!

We are so, so tired. cement is so heavy! At the same time we're excited! Hopefully we'll pour the new cement next week and then soon after we can start framing!