Foundation Complete!

Every spare second of my time over the last week has been spent moving around pieces of concrete.  I wore holes through the fingers of my gloves, and then wore my fingertips raw.  When I laid the last chunk of urbanite today I almost didn’t know what to do with myself for the rest of the day.  I just hung around the house site for a while, walking some on the foundation to test the stones, and make sure they didn’t move.  Now that the foundation is finished, the wall is ready for some cob!  I can’t wait to get some mud on my feet.

south wall

west wall & entrance

north & west walls

So, today I did use a little cement to mortar the bricks in the threshold.  The guy at a local building supply store gave me a free bag of concrete that had busted open. Here’s some mortar action:

And the threshold:

threshold

And here I am gloating over my beautiful, beautiful stemwall:

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more dry stacking

The south wall of the foundation has grown to stand 18″ above ground level, which means that part is finished.  Once the wall was up to ground level, I started stacking the urbanite on it’s side, instead of laying it flat.  I feel like this method allows for more creativity, and I’ve been having so much fun dry stacking lately.  The wall is also going up much faster, partly because stacking them on their sides means I get more height with each placement, but also because I’m using much smaller pieces, which I can pick up and use quickly, instead of struggling to slowly drag some massive chunks of concrete onto the wall.  The different shapes and sizes of the pieces make a more interesting wall, too…

south wall

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foundation update

Today I finished the third course of urbanite, which finally brought me into some above ground territory.  The eastern part of the stem wall is now a couple inches above the grass!

I haven’t been able to stack urbanite as often as I’d like lately, but, when I can work a full day, I seem to be able to lay a course in a day.  The hardest part of the dry stacking so far has been trying to move around pieces of concrete that weigh more than me.  I can’t lift the larger pieces on my own, so I’ve had to roll them across the field,  slowly inch them closer to the wall, and slide them into place.  And then sometimes slide them back off…

Here’s some pictures from earlier today:

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