It's been cold here for the last few days. Today, with a minus forty-one celcius wind-chill at one low-point in the day, I couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for all those blokes out on the south-end building houses. Outside. In the cold, cold air.

Yesterday, Autumn called to set up our "pre-constuction" meeting. Apparently it's called a "pre" construction meeting because construction doesn't really begin until all that messy, basic-foundation work is done. Or something. Really, it's just the builder's way of making you feel involved while at the same time making it blisteringly clear that the implied pre-constuction phase is more of a pre-come-see-but-don't-touch phase, and for crying-out-loud we know what we're doing so just-leave-us-alone, we'll work-on-our-own schedual-phase. And that foundation thing, it seems to be wrapping up.

Again, despite the cold weather and the haunting notion that I know I wouldn't want to be outside today, I checked the build site after work and discovered that not only had the concrete been inspected, but someone had backfilled around the house and did some basic grading out front. For example, you can wander over to the gallery and check out the sweet little level patch where my future garage is going to be. You might also notice the little slope up to the front step where the sidewalk will wrap around the side of the garage, take a single step up about half-way in, and eventually lead to one of those prefab concrete staircases into the front door. Ah! Just think. next year around this time I'll be writing to complain about shovelling that exact spot. In other words, I'll shovel it about half-way then have a pre-snow removal meeting to discuss the progress.

It was so cold... (How cold was it?) It was so cold that I hopped out of the truck to snap some pictures and only managed to click the shutter off six times before my fingers started to seize-up. If you know me, you also know that six pictures is like saying I took twelve steps out of the truck. It was cold. Did I mention that? And for one brief, ice-crystallizing second I felt some compassion for the dudes who would need to be wandering around that exact spot hammering floor-joists -- or whatever might be the next step. Then, I started worrying about my camera and its potential reaction to the weather... so I got back in the truck and drove away.

You may also notice in the gallery a photo of some building bits laying out at the front of the lot. I seem to recall from looking at other semi-built houses int he area that when building a house with a garage (Brett and Lenore's chronicle is absolutely useless for speculation here) they need to put some pilings under the garage, and then eventually build a little concrete frame for that, too. It doesn't go deep -- as last time I checked, my garage won't have a basement -- but concrete seems to be the basic fusion element between soil and wood, so I suspect the big-ol'truck will be bback to visit some day soon. I did see some wood and rebar again. I imagine the little strips of white foam have something to do with that too. Who can say?

My last observation, driving away from the build site (all the while slowly beginning to warm up a wee little bit) was that in front of the next-door empty-lot there was some window bucks, rebar, and wood bits. Based on my idle calculations (and those photos of our progress I took about thirty days ago) it would seem that construction next door is proceeding as well, only about a month behind us. Ha ha! We win. I don't imagine that big pile of frozen clay is helping things either. Not a good way to impress the neighbors:

"Hey dude, get your clay off my lawn!"

"What lawn? You don't even have a house!"

January 12, 2005 after 5PM | house , photography , weather | this is more