I have been convinced to start a blog on the subject of our adventures in home building, farm building, etc. Friend kindly helped me set up the blog. Hence, below, you will find the first installment of said adventures, already seen on Facebook, followed -- above -- by Part 2. Eventually, I'll get around to adding some of the backstory.

Part the first: 

There is now a giant empty concrete rectangle on our home site, which is evidently what a foundation looks like when there is no house on top of it.

I am informed by DH that it represents a “concrete step forward” in our attempt to achieve an actual house. He cracks himself up.

The foundation builders made the forms eight inches too tall, but after some pestering by DH, came back and removed the excess height.

They built very nice forms, that impressed the county inspector. Then they messed up one of the footings, when the form broke and spilled concrete around. They also put the sewer outlet pipe too high, blocked the water inlet pipe with concrete, left nails and great chunks of rubble all over the crawl space, didn't cut off the protruding studs that stick out waiting to stab some unwary person, didn't smooth off the lintel of the entrance of the crawl space and put some of the anchor bolts in the wrong places.

No problem, said DH. He'll just teach me how to grind off the protruding nail things with some highly-dangerous piece of machinery, and I can also wield a pickax to break up the rubble over and around the water pipe entrance.

“That sounds difficult,” I said.

“Piece of cake,” were, I believe, his exact words, along with, “Don't worry about that.”

I filed this advice right under “Home building is fun,” and “It will be easy.”

He assures me of these bits of wisdom in between cracking jokes about how this house will never be finished.

So I spent several hours picking up nails and chunks of concrete and heaving them out of the crawl space, which provided a nice workout, the effects of which I am still feeling.

Having achieved the foundation, DH next procured some lumber with which to build the mud sills and floor joists. Then he drove back to the far-off city to exchange the little square things that go around the foundation bolts (sill plates?), because they were the wrong size, because the foundation people put in a larger size than the plans called for.

But, the larger size is stronger, so, no problem, said he.

We then assembled ourselves to begin assembling the mud sills, only to discover that the lumber company hadn't delivered all the pieces we needed.

(“Are you sure?” asked the lumber salesman. Yes. Yes, we are sure. Even I, no expert in the carpentry business, can tell the difference between seeing three 16-foot-long pieces of pressure-treated 2-by-6, and not seeing them. After some pestering by DH, he eventually agreed to credit us for the wood not delivered.)

In the meantime, we hied ourselves off to the local building-supply store and bought more lumber, some anchor bolts to drill into the concrete, and sundry other items.

The next bit of entertainment occurred the next day, when our roof trusses arrived, unannounced, on a truck.

“Why,” DH inquired of the truck driver, “are these roof trusses arriving?”

“You ordered them, didn't you?” said the driver.

Well. We ordered them to be built. They were supposed to wait for notice of when to deliver them, and to send a notice to the lumber salesman to sign, all before delivering them. Why did none of this happen? Nobody knows.

But the truck driver agreed to take the trusses away again (they're supposed to come with a crane to lift them to the top of the not-yet-built house), and store them on-site at the truss-building place.

“Great,” said DH. “At least now we know they'll be ready when we want them.”

I filed this in my handy catch-all file of “things to be highly skeptical of,” and left him to do whatever home-building activities he does when I am escaping the madness working at my job in town.

Tune in next week, for more adventures in home-building.