Finishing the Pier Foundation

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I found the photos! So I can continue.

The 4 tallest piers along the southern edge of the building site are finished last. They're built up with 3 courses of block (6 blocks total, each course laid perpindicular to the last), then infilled with hand-mixed concrete. I made a lot of concrete in the wheelbarrow - typically 3 full batches per pier. Good thing it wasn't all that hot - it's definitely a workout.

Here I'm working on the last pier:

When the piers are finished, I wet them down with water to prepare for the surface bonded cement, which will be stuccoed on to the block. The fiberglass-reinforced stucco will give the piers tremendous lateral stability:

Here you can see all the large treated 2x12 sill plates are bolted in:

The surface bonded cement, or 'structural stucco' as some call it, was, for me at least, a nightmare to work with. But I've never plastered before so maybe that was my problem. A friend had given me some advice on consistency, which I must have misinterpreted because I ended up with stucco that kept falling off the block the second I trowled it on. After a lot of trial and error, I found that a paste-like consistency was what I was looking for, and it did adhere to the piers. The only problem is I was still probably laying it on too thick. I really had no idea what I was doing, and hated the stuff.

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Whether the piers are now stronger I couldn't say, but they're now shaggy:

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The surface bonded cement is a staggering $17 a bag, truly incredible. And the bag is only 40 pounds, which makes a very small batch. I've got only 2 bags and will have to stretch this out for the tallest piers.

Here the first pier is done:
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I could only get the surface bonded cement in brilliant white also, so I had to mix in some concrete dye to try and get it more cement-like. It's still too light. Not that it matters . . . it's a foundation.

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Here's another shot of the piers:

The site is starting to actually look like something.

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Here's a shot looking down towards the cabin site from the barn. The kids are starting to fill the pool, though it's still too cold really to swim:

Patty has laid out soaker hoses in the garden beds, which will make watering much easier (it's better for the plants also, to have the soil moistened, instead of being beaten with spray):

Water from the well is actually stubbed out at the back edge of the garden (this used to be a homesite, before the fire). Someday we'll tie a faucet into this, and run all the soaker hoses off of it. Then we can just turn on the faucet to water the entire garden.

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We bought some kind of concord grape at the local nursery, and planted it in front of the old rusty lawnmower (maybe it'll eventually hide it). I rig up stakes and a crosspiece to give the grape something to climb on:

Here the stuccoing is underway:

You can see in the above photo where I've begun to lay down landscape fabric and gravel on the left (south) side of the site. Most of the site will have the old slab beneath it. But this section on the left is dirt. So to keep the weeds and runoff and humidity down, I'm covering it with fabric and gravel. It will be better also for using the area underneath the building for storage.

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And here the pier foundation is finished:

It's time to tear down the batterboards and move on to the framing.
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