Kitchen Foundation

As planned, we officially started work on our kitchen on Saturday. After nearly two years without one, I can almost taste the excitement. Step one is making sure it's structurally sound. Unfortunately this part is not very interesting or glamorous, but I'm sharing the details anyway in the interest of full disclosure.

Here my father-in-law inserts rebar into a freshly poured section of concrete. (He knew he would regret not wearing gloves for this... and he did. Always wear gloves!)

As I've mentioned, half of the room was not built on any foundation at all; the other half was built on flat stacked stone. Pouring a new concrete footer was the best solution to firm up the stacked stone, to create structure under the unsupported area and to tie it all together. (Note: In a nutshell, the footer is the base element that secures the structure into or onto the soil.) Once the footer is done, we will eventually pour the actual floor over the whole shebang.

Below we have 40 empty concrete bags and a nice peek at the current state of things. Yes, we decided to do most (if not all) of the concrete work ourselves to save money. Bags of concrete are relatively inexpensive, and we borrowed a small mixer from a friend. The main drawback is having to hump the bags from the store to the truck to the house. (That's S's job.)

It's all a mess, no doubt... We have a lot of work to do, and I will try to keep you updated while sparing you some of the less interesting details. Empty bags of concrete aren't exactly thrilling, I know. But stay with me here! Lots of exciting things in the works.

What did you get done this weekend?