page 3
in the summer of '03 the szuplats
purchased property on 12 vacation lane.
found here will be details of
putting a structure up
written mostly by erica and photographed
a lot by ben, however like most things in life there are exceptions....
for instance ben wrote that last
useless sentence.
good
for you! you are very persistent and have muddled your way to
page 3.
halloween
our beautiful Bouse House
friday
oct. 31 our baby blue port-a-potty arrives at the site.
our
framer asked for two things, electricity and a toilet. ask and
ye shall receive. i was advised by the port-a-potty receptionist
to hold off until after the weekend to get the port-a-potty delivered
in case of some neighbourhood pranksters tipping it over! there
was the possibility of framing the deck/capping the foundation
this saturday so we got the toilet right away anyway. (we don't
think anyone has used it so far so it shouldn't be too messy if
someone has tipped it- yuck!) the excavator began backfilling
the site as well, until the bulldozer/backhoe thing broke. a belt
of some sort is on order and so our lumber order and framer have
been pushed back a few more days. our job site is tighter than
some as we are trying to save as many trees as we can. this makes
for close quarters and so the excavator was graciously backfilling
an entire side of our foundation which would clear a lot of the
dirt out of the way and make a space for lumber delivery and some
maneuvering.
we
would like to also give a shout out to stach who has, among various
other things, been a tireless liaison between contractors this
week.
p.s.
for all you regular readers, we tried to spice things up on this
entry by having a guest blogger (kay!) but she claims she can't
rightly do so since she has not visited the job site much. however,
we think she is just chicken and can't duel with our literary
expertise... our apologies to the regulars who had to read another
entry by erica.
november 2nd & 3rd daylight
savings time went into or out of effect (who can tell anymore?)
one week ago. in the northeast this means it is solidly DARK by
5:15 p.m. ben therefore made some wise purchases at... (anyone?)
the home depot. we will need to be on the night shift very soon.
we also made our virgin trip to the other new home depot
that just opened in hyannis. we decided to steer clear of this
madhouse and stick to the also new but less crowded one in wareham.
apparently everyone from p'town to the bridges was hungry for
their very own home depot. thankfully we know how to use the self
check-out registers and were coordinated with our very first ladder
and didn't try to run the entire ladder over the scanner. (unlike
the people in front of us who unstuck their trash barrels from
their shopping cart, somehow crammed them on the scanner and then
stuffed them back into the shopping carriage) below is
a picture of me filling the little holes in the foundation where
the rebar was cut. this was a fun job and i think i might be a
competent cake decorator. i was sad that we ran out of holes to
fill .
it's much belated and time to give props
to
pete and jen for going where some men and women have gone before,
but most importantly, going before us!
editors note: some people have wrongly
assumed the above is our house all done!!! sorry this wasnt clearer
but the above house is pete and jens place, which they broke ground
on back in march.... sorry for the ambiguity here..... i am going
to throw erica under the bus on this one and have to blame her
for that!!!! she should have said something along the lines of
watching and learning from jen pete as they work on their house (pictured above) has been an invaluable asset... or
something...
and sorry to uncle dub (pictured getting
the tour later) for your showing up to a rather dissapointing
and incomplete house because of erica's ambiguity...
on the 6th of november
erica
received her college gradgumate degree
yippee!!!!
and
the house received its deck
don
pires (left) and his crew slapped the deck on in one day. we have
known for sometime that we took down the bare necessities in regard
to trees; don has proclaimed it the tightest site he has worked
on in 17 years working on the cape. he has implored us to take
down as many more trees as we can handle without crying. this
will begin a busy week as the foundation gets backfilled, dirt
gets added to the basement and gets tamped down (which allows
for the basement slab man to come in.) all this so don and his
crew can return to do the framing within "8 days". whew!
on
a separate note, i (ben) put a counter in the bottom of the page
not too long ago to see how many people are visiting our housing
adventure page (not complete true i also did it to see if i could).
we have been averaging 4.3 hits a day so far. when you remove
erica and my own hits each day, as we marvel at ourselves, that
leaves 2.3 people a day...... who are you people.... i'm especially
watching out for the point 3rd of a person cause you are creepin
me out!!!
november
8th..... dirt has been dumped down the chimney and the bulk head
(above left). using elbow grease, wheel barrows and most of the
day we succeed in spreading all this dirt fairly evenly over the
entire basement floor. we even get to start tamping it which was
not on the schedule until the next day. the rub is that we probably
should do it all again.... as it seems like we are still several
inches lower than the desirable level to start pouring the basement
slab...... we ponder the next move........
the
answer came the next day on november 9th
we
have not even moved in yet but we (maybe erica has had a better
neighbor somewhere, ill let here speak for herself) already have
the best next door neighbors ever, paul and becky, bar none. they
loaned us the machine you see above, the dingo!! using the dingo
we dropped a bunch more dirt down the chimney and ....
erica
packed it down..... we are again missing pictures of the helpers
who were and are completely irreplaceable. on this day it was
jen, jen, pete and the allsups who brought by pizza for lunch.
im sure erica will be able to expand on the whole day later as
we are about to run out for dinner.... all in all im satisfied
that this weekend was a success!!!!!!!!!
page
4
where
we may get a framed house and the much requested septic sytem!!
bens first attempt at inserting a counter.....provided
by http://www.digits.com/