Failing the Footing and Working the Pipe...

A couple weeks ago at this time I was standing in a trench looking down at my failure.  The trench might as well have been my grave.  It was about as long.  Not quite as deep.

I don't usually work on Sunday, but I'd kind of mired my ox.  On the previous Friday I'd been digging away at the trenching for the footing of the shed.  I've wanted to get it at least up as soon as possible.

As time has gone on, and on, and on, and I continue to spend hours and hours trying to make the excavations what I need them to be, I realize more and more how badly the guy I hired to do the digging screwed up.  I talked to the guy across the street, who does remodeling as a job, and he said that if he were doing it he'd have been able to do it right in about four hours, rather than the six and a half that I paid the other guy for.  Then again, he lives in a motorhome behind his son-in-law's house, and he he was wearing a home made t-shirt with a picture of him at Burning Man in the 90's.

But of all the things that the guy I hired screwed up, he screwed up the shed footing worst.  I dug furiously for nine hours straight on that Friday, and thought I had it just about there.  Mark LaRocco was coming to help on Saturday morning, so I rented a cement mixer at Home Depot on the way out.  I wanted two people so that the pour would go quickly enough that the concrete wouldn't start to set up before it was done.

But there was this root from that damn tree I mostly cut down.  On Friday I'd hacked at it with a mattock for an hour and hadn't made a dent.  The result was that we had to cut a few inches off the end of the trench to go around it.  And it just went on and on, and it was lunch time before we were even ready to dump the gravel in the bottom.  Then after we did, we went to get lunch and the concrete mix.  But when we got there, the yard where I was going to buy it was closed.  Everyone had just decided it was too pretty a summer day, and they'd decided to knock off early.

So we went to Lowe's and got bagged mix, which was more expensive, but we couldn't think what else to do.  We had to take it in two loads, because I'm relatively sure if I'd taken it in one it would have snapped the trucks rear end.

When we got it all unloaded and dumped the gravel, and leveled it, it was coming on evening, and Mark had to go.  His wife was nine months pregnant, and she was having a rough day of it.  He'd even put off their plans to go look at mini-vans to stay as long as he had.

But since I had the mixer I planned to stay and work into the night.  I didn't think I had any other option.  It had to be back at 9:30 Sunday morning.  Night fell, however, and it became obvious I couldn't work on.  I couldn't see what I was doing.  I decided I'd have to come back at dawn and do the pour, get the mixer back on time, and make it for at least the last half of church.

You'd think after working like a dog on Friday and Saturday, having had only four hours of sleep Friday night, that I'd go comatose on Saturday night, and have to rely on the alarm to get me out of bed in the morning.  I was too anxious though, and though I lay in bed I just tossed and turned, never quite asleep.  I didn't make it under until about 3:00am.  Then when the alarm rang at 5:30, I was already up.  I got a bowl of cereal and drove out to Magna.

Fatigue was making me really, woefully stupid.  I couldn't figure out what on earth I was doing half the time, but I knew I needed to keep right on doing it.  Because I only had about three hours until that damn mixer had to be back.

I'd forgotten my phone at home, so I didn't know what time it was, and was relying on the bells at the Catholic church down the street to tell the time.  They start ringing at I think 7:00am.  Maybe 6:00.  And, since I hadn't heard them I thought I was doing pretty well.

Then as I was maundering around the trench, dumbly trying to use gravel to form embankments into which I could pour the concrete, I heard the first bell.  It chimed nine times, then played some Catholic hymn.  Appearantly they didn't do the bells until 9:00 on Sunday morning, I guess to avoid confusing people waiting to hear the call to 9:00 mass.

I wasn't ready to pour, and my deadline was somewhere between 9:00 and 9:30.  I didn't know exactly what time I'd clocked renting it out Saturday morning.  And I was at least fifteen minutes from Home Depot, plus the time it would take to load up the mixer in the truck by myself.

I immediately accepted that I had blown it and had the mixer for another day.

I went on working.  And at about noon, Tony, the guy next door, who had been a county engineer for a while came out and pointed out that I was going to make a terrible mess of things just pouring into my shoddy gravel ditches.  I had been beginning to realize that myself through the haze of fatigue by about that time.

So I went to Lowe's for some lumber and a saw blade.  I'd only brought a cutoff wheel for the rebar.

When I got back with the wood I realized that I'd bought the wrong size wood.  But by that point I didn't care.  I began cutting and trying to nail the frames together, but I only had my 3lbs sledge with me, not my framing hammer, so it was a messy job.  And since the excavation there was no really flat solid soil anywhere, so when I'd hit a nail with the sledge, most of the energy went to driving the board into the dust, rather than the nail into the board.  It was very slow going, and my arm got very tired.  I cut myself pretty badly when the ground shifted under the board once, causing the hammer to glance off and me to snag a knuckle on the nail I'd been driving.  Another time it shifted and I hit my thumb pretty good.  Two weeks later the nail is purple in places, but it hasn't come off yet.

Anyway, as evening was coming on I was finally down in the trench, trying to nail the last bit of the ladder framing together, but it just wouldn't fit.  It was that damn tree root again.  The framing added three inches to the necessary length of the trench, and I didn't have it.  So the root was getting in the way again.

At first I was going to throw the sledge and scream every curse I could think of.  But then I decided I wanted to cry.  Then, Tony's wife came out and offered me some tomatoes from her garden, just on the other side of the fence from the shed trench.  She was very sweet and I thanked her.

Night fell.  I wasn't ready.  And this time I did go home and hibernate, until the alarm clock woke me at 5:30.  Out of bed, I went back out to the lot, and worked until 8:30, when I had to admit I still wasn't ready to pour, and that if I was, I was extremely unlikely to be able to do so before I had to have the mixer back.  I wasn't up for another day of it.  So I got to loading up.

I drove in to the Home Depot parking lot and got the rental desk guy to help me unload it, and he looked at it to make sure I'd washed it up before returning.  I told him not to bother, that I hadn't even had the chance to use it.  There was the second day to pay for, and a small fee for keeping it over the anticipated schedule, and as the coup de grace, when I ran my card to pay for it, it was declined.  I had over-run.  I had to go to the bank and transfer funds, then come back to pay.  The rental guy looked so apologetic when he said he hoped I had a better day.

After taking care of bond issue at the building department, I went home and spent the next week lying on the couch, trying desperately to ignore the previous one had ever happened.

Then last week, I decided to tackle the plumbing rough in.  It took the whole week, but I've finished putting the pipe and fittings all together.  And I only ruined about $30 worth of material.  Not that bad, considering I'd never really done any plumbing to speak of before.  Anyway, it was good experience.

I'm going to be taking it out to Magna and putting it all together tomorrow.  Hopefully it will all be water tight.  It's got to pass a pressure test eventually.