The basement is turning pink!

As Matt and I work our way around the foundation with the waterproofing, he follows along afterward putting up 1" rigid (pink!) insulation which both insulates (!) and protects the waterproofing membrane from sun damage now and other damage later. The membrane can be exposed for up to 14 days, but we're trying to get it covered as soon as possible to keep as much of its integrity as we can.

As of the end of the day Saturday, Matt and I have now completed almost 8 of the 13 wall segments. After the younger kids were in bed, Matt went back out with Owen to put up the pink rigid insulation. They worked until it was too dark to work any more, which is pretty late since its just a week past the summer solstice!

As we finished up our work, Matt commented about potentially being ready to put shingles on the roof about a month from now! Understanding that there are many variables, most of which are out of our control, that was still an exciting thought. This whole thing has moved so very very slow that it's hard to imagine ever reaching a milestone like that! Much less within a month!

Now, of course, that means we're hoping to find friends who are comfortable working on a 10:12 pitch!

This whole project has been, so far, a cycle between amazement that it's actually working so far - real work is getting done! - and incredulity that we can ever get this done. How good to have such a visible daily reminder to continue to place our life before God, with my repeated prayer, "God, we're doing this because we believe you have directed us to do this, so this is your deal, so we're not going to worry because we're counting on you to make it work because it is yours." Every day.

Waiting for K

We're still waiting. But I looked back at dates, and our paperwork was submitted for final approval by K's country back in the first week of June, and our lawyer over there says it usually takes about a month from submission to when they file the case with the courts. That means that theoretically we could get our last signature and find out what our court date is sometime this week! And since K's country doesn't celebrate our country's Independence Day, that means that their offices shouldn't be closed down at all this week...[Andrea, stop analyzing it all out. This has nothing to do with holidays or government agencies or anything you can do, but everything to do with God orchestrating everything, even the timing, down to the day, the hour, for his amazing purposes and our good.]...and so maybe we'll hear! Suddenly this long long wait that I've been mentally preparing to be longer rather than shorter so I don't end up dreadfully disappointed, looks like it really might happen within the typical window! I'm letting myself start hoping for a travel date in mid-August instead of early September like I'd been mentally preparing myself for.

I tell my kids that saying they "can't wait" for something isn't really true. They can wait. It might be hard, but they can. Well, as much as I know from a practical side how much more complicated life will be when this boy comes home, I am really looking forward to when he gets to be home. Little man has never lived at home in his life! He was born at home (unexpectedly, because he was premature), and was taken to the hospital for medical care that day, and has been in some form of an institution ever since. As I look at his pictures, I don't care how hectic it will be here for a while as we settle in to our new life, I just want for him to be ours, and to have him home. Back when we were considering adoption, and thinking about what made sense for when, Matt and I talked about how if Owen or Leah or Reuben or Rinnah were lost, and we suddenly found where they were, we wouldn't say, "Oh, good. Now we know where she is. Well, let's make sure we get everything all ready and then we'll go get her. Let's get Reu's seizures under control (ha!) and maybe repaint her room, and you know, it would be really great if we could save up some money for a new bike for her to have when she gets here..." No! We would drop everything to go bring her home and then let the rest fall into place as it would.

This is our boy. Maybe not legally (yet), but in every way other than that he is our boy, and as soon as they'll let us, we're going to go get him, knowing that the rest won't just "fall into place" but knowing that God, who has orchestrated every detail of this life that he's setting before us has chosen just the right time for him to come home. And like I just commented on my house update post, that means we're putting ourselves fully in the hands of God to carry us through. Because we believe that he is strong and faithful and good and He Will Do It!!

Foundation framing is done

Bright and early this morning our framer got here and worked until they had the entire foundation wall framed and sheathed. Yay! There is one more interior wall that needs to be framed up on the basement level before they can start moving up, but supposedly the joists for the basement ceiling/main level floor are showing up on Monday and they will begin capping the lower level. The weather looks like it should be cooperative...

Our little Leah is amazing. Waterproofing is a two (or even three) person job, which means Matt can't do it alone. I also can't help him when kids are napping because someone has to monitor Reuben for seizures and can't help him with kids are awake because someone has to watch the little kids. Enter Leah. Today she agreed to watch Reu's monitor and call out the window to us if there was anything we needed to know. That gained us work time during their nap. When Reu and Rin woke up, Leah played with them for the rest of the afternoon, either pushing them on the swings, or, when she/they were done with that, we brought them all into the basement with the chalk basket and they played with that and dropped stones into the sump baskets while we got another strong hour of work in.

Matt's wondering what the framer...and the inspector! will think of our fancy walls. ;)

Of the thirteen wall segments that need waterproofing, we have the five easiest ones done and a sixth almost done. But then the rain came enough that our sticky stuff won't stick, so we quit for the day. But tomorrow afternoon looks like good weather, assuming we can find someone to watch the kids!

Waterproofing

Today was a good day. Our framers didn't end up making it over here until the very end of the day, but even in that short amount of time they got some useful work done which I will show later in this post.

We finally seem to be out of the pattern of rain every day, except for the days when there's LOTS of rain. And you can't have rain when you're trying to put waterproofing membrane onto your walls! So Matt got started right away this morning with putting the nasty black primer on the walls that we thought we could get membrane onto today. (You're only supposed to prime what you can do in a day.) Here's how it looks on one section of the wall.

Next step is to cut the membrane itself to length:

And then peel off the brown paper backing and stick the super sticky stuff onto your primed wall so that when you're done it looks something like this:

And, on the framing side of things, they were able to get the windows more fully framed with headers and sills to the point that he was able to cut out the plywood so the rough openings are actually open! Here's glimpse of what those five windows will offer our lower level:

 And the cat, checking it out. Final grade will be comparable to what is there now, which means we'll need some retaining wall to pull it back from the windows a bit. We plan to salvage limestone from a wall in our neighbor's yard which has been falling down for a number of years. Our house belonged to Matt's grandfather originally, and the one next door to his grandpa's older brother. That limestone wall was built by Matt's dad and his dad's cousin when they were in high school, so it has sentimental value. It's been tough seeing the wall slowly crumbling, but exciting that we'll have the opportunity to re-purpose the rock for our own project.

 One last, less rewarding, task was that Matt pulled OUT all of the drain tile that he had put in. So much silty mud has slid down into the space next to the footings that he wants to get it all shoveled out nice again before he lays the drain tile back down. Now that we're working on the waterproofing (which has to wrap over the edge of the footing), when he puts the drain tile in the next time, we'll be able to cover it appropriately with gravel so it won't need to be messed with again. Still, putting it in a week and a half ago was more than worth it for the amount of water we were able to pump out of the hole instead of carry out bucket by bucket!

Hopefully I'll have more work to update on tomorrow evening!

Forward motion

For starters, we have  yet to hear anything about a court date for K. This is what we expected, since the time going through the MOJ is expected to take about a month, thus explaining my silence about how stuff with K is progressing. We're just waiting. And still crossing off our days counting down to when we expect to have him home, or at least have a date for bringing him home.

And on the house, things have been happening despite my lack of time to post. (It's rather amazing how hard it can be to sit down and post a few photos!)

Let's see. I last posted early evening on Friday. That night as we were falling asleep, Matt commented to me that that was one of those days when all he wanted to do was push all the dirt back into the hole, plant a new tree, and forget about the whole thing. We didn't sleep much that night with all the storms going through and children who were awake because of the storms. We lost two decent size tree limbs in the early evening storm, and were fully expecting more before the night was through.

Saturday was better. First, Matt shared this with me that he had read early that morning:

Cast your bread upon the waters,
    for you will find it after many days. 

Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
    for you know not what disaster may happen on earth. 

If the clouds are full of rain,
    they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
    in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie. 

He who observes the wind will not sow,
    and he who regards the clouds will not reap. 

As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.

Ecclesiastes 11:1-6 

Ecclesiastes is an unusual book that I find to be better read all at once than little bits here and there because the "punch line" doesn't come until one little sentence in the last chapter, but that said, there was so much in here that touched where we were. The weather has been a big challenge for the construction. We expected to be significantly further along by now than we are. And yet we were reminded here that we do not know what God is doing, or how he is doing it, and that therefore, if he has told us to work, we work. 

So we didn't fill in the hole. ;)

 Our framer didn't make it here at 8am like he was planning, but DID get over here a little before noon, and did enough work to get us to this point:

notice the little 8-year-old with a good view!

What a difference having walls makes! Not all of the walls, and not sheathed walls, but there were some walls down in that hole!

Monday they were here working for a few good hours, and then were here for part of the morning today putting sheathing on and framing up more of the walls. This photo is fun (for me, at least!) because it starts to show some of the definition of the levels. The lower part of the wall is where the joists for the half level landing will bear, while the taller walls are where the main floor joists will bear. (For those of you who care about the details, the tall wall at the far left of the photo is in the entry and Matt's office at roughly hip height. A normal thickness wall will sit on top of that, but having the foundation come up high there will let us keep the level of the dirt high around the office, thus sinking it into the ground. The ground, by the way, doesn't show in the snip of the model I added.)

Matt also said that tonight it felt really good to get out there and get some "real" work done instead of just shoveling landslidden muck back out of the hole or vacuuming water out of the space next to the footings. Here he is putting a strip of vapor barrier onto the top of the wall and wrapping down the interior face. This will then be taped to the vapor barrier that's put into the inner face of the wall, and foamed to the rigid insulation inserted into the spaces between the joists.

We're hoping that by the end of this week we'll be ready to put waterproofing on the exterior walls. This would be a big step forward. We'll see what comes. ;) We sure do not know the work of God who makes everything!