Folks -
Well, today the wif and I finished with small stuff in the yard and building area - marking things we wanted taken out or moved... "Fixin'" to get ready, as it were. We checked the stringlines on the batterboards - is that the right term?... Anyway, the diagonals were about 1 1/2 inches out - we will take another look at it in the morning. I've marked all of the outside diglines as the backhoe guy wanted, so...
I went to the planning department to see if I could reduce the size of the footings and confirm a couple of "fuzzys"... The good news is that I can modify things to save on concrete - and the process of doing it all a bit less puckery... They gave the okay and mentioned a couple of other things that I needed to do - another string of rebar near the top of the perimeter wall.
The last step was to cut the sidewalk and back step by the garage so the footings can be dug. I went to the lumberyard and picked up a couple of abrasive cutting wheels for my Makita Circ hoping that would do it... Ran into my woodshop teacher and he crumbed on the idea - but masonry blades were almost a hundred bucks... Anyway, long story short, he said he had two at his cabinet shop that he would loan me and BLAMMO... Poifect!
I took the cuts about 1/4 or 1/2" at a time, a bit more aggressively on succeeding cuts as it was cutting well. I wore a face shield and as luck would have it we had a pretty good breeze this afternoon and I was able to be upwind of everything. The dog, however, was lying on the rest of the sidewalk - downwind. He sneezed a few times, but couldn't be bothered to get up. Of course he's an old orphaned, crippled mutt with three legs, no balls, tail, brains, sense or shame, so I wasn't expecting much, given his unbroken loosing track record with 2 rottweilers, 1 Doberman and a Chevy pickup. I digress. I did notice that the saw sure works harder in concrete than it does in doug fir... I'll have pics in the AM...
The backhoe will be here in the morning - we're going to double and double-check our measurements.... More to come...
Oh boy! ooOOhh Boy! Oboyoboyoboyo!
John Moorhead