First pour

Well this is the initial setup, my neighbor ended up buying a new concrete mixer since his old one broke, so that's what I'm using.  My dad was helping with the pouring and my neighbor was there to give me advice.  Little did I know that this would be one of the last times I would see him since he had covid...

I didn't take any pictures during the pour since I didn't want to deal with my phone.  I soaked the inside of all the forms in diesel as a mold release since I had it laying around, and as I was mixing I put in a bunch of anti-crack fiber into the mix since my engineer friend said I should use it.  I also added some bracing to the pyramid part since my neighbor said he could see it blowing out as we were pouring which would be a bad time.  We also vibrated it periodically to make sure it filled in the cracks.

I didn't want to leave the forms on for a long time, so my friend said to wait a few days and then spray on some cure sealer.  The diesel worked pretty well as a mold release which was nice.  I think it came out pretty good, even if it isn't totally straight up and down since I messed up a bit on form assembly.

 

More digging and rebar

I realized that the first form I should do is the middle since there's better access to it and I haven't dealt with forms before.  Also the other hole filled with water from rain which is annoying.

I decided to just spot weld the corners of the rebar instead of trying to figure out how to tie them together and keep them from shifting around when I moved them.  I still had a lot of issues with them twisting though.

 

Hand digging and forms

I couldn't dig deep enough with the skid steer, so I still have to dig a decent amount by hand...

Now to make those weird pyramid forms, thank god for online calculators to do at least some of this stuff.  It was still a big pain to cut everything to fit properly.

Machine digging for the footings

I used my friend's skid steer to do the bulk of the digging.  Of course I forgot about the garage wiring so I cut right through it...

Now in the future I'll be running 100A service out there, but I'm not even close to being ready to do that, and I still need power out there so I'm just soldering this back together for now.  Definitely not ideal, but wire is expensive...  Also this is underground so it's not really much of a fire hazard.

I also have to re-route the existing conduit since one of the footings is going right where it was.

Pulling lube made a huge difference for getting the wire back through.

Since I had to re-route the conduit, it goes farther so the wire's not long enough to reach the panel, which is just wonderful.  So I spliced on some other wire I had laying around using clamps and a bunch of tape.  It's a good thing I don't have any kids.

Now I decided to mark out where the first footing was going to go.  I still have to do more digging so I'm below the frost line.

Starting on the new balcony

Since I'll be eventually be living only upstairs while I work on the downstairs and basement, I need a way to get in up there.  I'd rather it be nice, so I just need to build a balcony off the master bedroom in the back.  This roof next to the master bedroom is weird, so I'm just going to rebuild that along with it.  First step is removing that asbestos siding I guess.

I decided to mark out where I want the supports to be and then start on plans for the framing and footings.

The vertical joists are for the balcony part, and the horizontal ones are for the roof next to it, and that continues back farther than the drawing shows.

I had one of my civil engineer friends help with the math for the column sizes, and this what we came up with at the beginning.  It's built strong enough for high snow loads with minimal sinking into the ground over time.  It'll probably be strong enough to park a car on, but its not really big enough to do that.

Now that's a lot of concrete bags, I ended up getting the 50lb ones since they cost about the same per bag as the 80lb bags but are easier to handle.

And some more marking to for scale, and it's nice to see this stuff more before digging.

Attic insulation

 This was pretty similar to the last time I did this with my dad.

It's pretty cramped and hot up there, but at least this blower setup moves a ton of air so there's a good wind going on.

Had to cut a hole to get the last bit up there

I didn't have enough cellulose to finish it up so I ended up having to buy a few bales.  Turns out the machine is free to use (with a deposit) and the cellulose is pretty cheap.  I really should have just thrown all of mine out as it came out, and then bought new insulation with how much time I spent on moving it around and stuff since using the machine was far easier than my homemade thing.

The blower I used for ventilation works pretty well and looks cool when there's a lot in the air.  It helps that the motor is running at about double its rating though.

Rear room ceiling drywall

Last bedroom was the one that I already have done once, so that made it much less enjoyable...