Month: June 2014

Final grading is still underway, but we are getting down to the end.  Grass is growing already where the grading is done behind the building. The floor drains are now hooked up and the retention berm has been extended around the pond.

Barry helped to get the heavy pieces of the lift in place so I won’t have to ask anyone to help with that job. A significant load off of  the folks attending the next party. Now I’ll have to get the hydraulics and cables hooked up. When I pulled the tarps off I found that the geothermal guys let their bentonite flow all over and under the lift pieces.  Another bout of pressure washing, and they don’t seem any worse it, but I’m not sure about the hydraulics. First step is to flush the hydraulic hose and cylinder to make sure none of the stuff got inside. Then, what do I do with all of that bentonite?

The propane tank is supposed to arrive next Tuesday, and we got some tables at auction to pick up this week. In the meantime, speakers are up and working in the shop, and I can turn them up as loud as I want. The office speakers are next, then the lift bay. There is still a lot of trim carpentry to do, which I expect to get to in the next couple of weeks. (Good excuse to buy some new tools.)

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Some real progress has been made in the last week.  The earthwork is moving along and the floors are done. Now I can get some of the trim work done and start moving things into their proper locations.  The bathroom plumbing is done. (Twice, but that’s another story.)  It has been raining so far this week so Barry hasn’t been back to continue the earthwork and it’s too messy to push the cars outside to move them into the storage bay.

JUNE 3

Stronghold Floors were here for three days to put the epoxy floors in the shop and storage bay. Barry was doing some grading work at the same time. We were concerned about dust with the coatings going on but it wasn’t a problem. I also put the bathroom floor down today.

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JUNE 4

The shop coating was finished and the storage bay first coat went on. I wrapped up the bathroom plumbing, and turned on the water.

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JUNE 5

The second coat went on the storage bay. Now a 4 day wait starts before I can put anything heavy on the coated floors. There was water all over the bathroom floor… the freecycle toilet had a crack in it from all of the moving around over the winter… off to Home Depot again! Kerch picked up a few (49!) plants as a start for the landscaping phase of the project. We’ll have to wait until the topsoil is put down to start on that.

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JUNE 9

Bathroom plumbing is done (again) and tools are starting to move into the wood shop.

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The weather has been dry enough for Barry to start on the final grading. We were successful in discussions with the county engineer in changing the drainage system from buried infiltration pits ($$$) to an infiltration basin ($).  This consists of a berm along a low spot in the yard. You can see it in the pictures.  There will be a stone swale along the driveway and a pipe under it to collect water and another pipe to collect water from the east end downspout and floor drains, so more earth disturbance is still coming, but a lot of the dirt piles are disappearing and we can start to see what the finished project will look like. Kerch is checking into plants for all of the new slopes and bare areas.

The guys doing the epoxy floors will be here tomorrow, so we had to move everything out of the storage bay and wood shop into the office and lift bay. (The car roof hanging from the ceiling in the storage bay is for the BMW).

I will be very glad when I can put everything into it’s final location instead of moving it back and forth! I’ll pay for all of this effort tomorrow!

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