Fun with Foundations

I will be the first to admit that foundations and cement aren't something I spend much time thinking about. Of course, I realize just how important the foundation work is to the long, healthy future of our house. This past week the foundation went from footing to poured and back-filled. Progress indeed! We did have our first real snow on Wednesday which created some muddy conditions later in the week, but the weather should be back in the 70s this coming week.

The view from our neighbor's window across the street.

The wooden forms are put in place to make the basement walls.

The foundation walls are finished and they are taking down the wooden forms.

It looks funny to see a ladder leading into the basement.

A look into the basement with a dirt floor.

Spraying the sealer

The dirt has been back-filled along the foundation walls.

The bulldozer backed up to the house to level and pound in the fill.

 That's all for this week. With three more foundations to be dug on our block we'll see what progress is made next. Until the next step! -Lynne

The Big Dig

The sign says it all! After weeks of looking at a vacant lot we have action! 

On Monday we arrived to find that our lot had been excavated and the rough outline of our house is visible.

The pile of dirt created by digging out foundations for our house and our neighbor's is much larger than expected. The nice man at the construction site said they'll keep the pile next to our lot until the foundation is in place so they can back-fill around the walls.

The construction workers wasted no time string-lining off the area that would be our home in preparation for laying the footings.

On Wednesday they poured the footings. Somehow it looks smaller in pictures than in person.

Lynne, Astrid and I are very excited for the basement walls to be poured and the the house to start taking shape.

Until the next step,

Matthew

Baby Steps

It started so small, a tour on a whim, seeing the market overprice “tear-downs” in a neighborhood we loved and endless searching for a little bit of modern in this Western town. It’s in this way, with small steps like these, that our journey to build a house in Denver began.

We heard from people who have experience with this sort of thing that making all of the pre-construction decisions is the hardest part. We actually had no problem knowing what we wanted; it was finding room in the budget for what we wanted that was the problem! 

Now we are getting very close to the first day when our dusty lot will become a home. As the neighborhood sprouts up around us we also wanted to document what it looks like now. Kind of like those black and white pictures you see at the State Fair of old streetscapes from years back with trolley cars and women in long dresses.

See below for some vistas of our Stapleton neighborhood, Central Park West, before the masses arrive!

 Our block! Five houses will go in a tidy row, we are the second lot from the corner.

The view of our block from the west end. You can barely see the old control tower in the center distance from when this land was an airport.

 Our lot! There will be an alley between the garages you see and ours.

 The corner intersection. Google Maps actually calls it 32nd Avenue Parkway so we'll have to figure that out.

The next block down, also yet to be filled with homes. 

 

The panorama from the nearby Central Park (New Yorkers: don't laugh!)

So here you can see the control tower and the parkway on the right side of the picture leads to our block. In the background is downtown Denver with a lovely mountain backdrop.

 Another nearby park which we'll walk along to reach the shops and restaurants nearby.

  Of course Astrid joined us for the photo tour and we couldn't resist including this snap!

Finally, the end goal! This is our neighbor's house which ours will look like.

Signing off until the next step...