foundation

On 4 Aug. 2014, we went to the site to witness the demolishing our cottage. While it took greenGoat about 4 weeks to meticulously deconstruct the material to be recycled, it took only 2 hours for Spang Builders to demolish our home. It was painful to see our old cottage to get pulverized into a rubble. We knew that our house served its useful life, but letting it go was an emotional ordeal for us. Although most of our memories were outside the cottage – sitting in front in our Adirondack chairs sipping a glass of wine enjoying the sunshine ripples on the pond, watching our kids catch bass in the pond, tracking the wildlife scent around our property with Beyaz, enjoying lobster bakes with our friends, there were still a lot of memories tied to the inside of the cottage – enjoying the crackling fire in our old fireplace, listening to the rainfall on the pond at dinner, watching our kids spend countless hours with the play kitchen on the deck. So we couldn’t watch the end of the demolishing process, and left.

: view from the front door before demolish

: demolishing starts

: living room and kitchen gone

: entering into living room from deck

: view from the front porch

: Jenni’s room last seconds

Once the dust settled, we were surprised how fast the foundation footing and walls rose up. Since our house is pretty much on a ledge, the footing had to be several steps following the site topography. At the end, the foundation footing needed 20 steps. We attended the first pouring of the cement along with Steven and Wiebke by depositing the obligatory quarters in the foundation for everyone in the family. Compared to the cinder block foundation of the old cottage, our new home’s foundation footing is concrete anchored in the ledge and reinforced with rebar. It is fair it say that our new home’s foundation will outlive the age of the old cottage.

: foundation footing forms

: first foundation footing pour

: 6 of the 20 footing steps (West elevation)

For foundation walls, the subcontractor used cast-in-place concrete construction by setting up removable interlocking forms for the pouring of concrete foundation walls. Steel rebar was added to provide strength to the wall. Since some sections of the foundation wall is exposed by design, vibrators were used to remove air bubbles. We will be able to asses the effectiveness of this effort better once the footing is covered up at the bottom of the foundation walls with landscaping, and the top of the foundation walls are covered with siding. Once the concrete was cured, the forms were removed, and for the first time we could see our new home shaping up.