Forms before function

It's pretty cool to see the house starting to come out of the ground.  The footers are now dry enough, so the foundation wall forms were set in place and the concrete was poured.

You can see from this perspective how dramatic the grade change is across the lot, even after we lowered the house 4ft.  This really isn't any different than other houses with walk-out basements to the backyard, except for the fact that you can see our walk-out from the street.

You can start to get a better idea about the footprint of the house now.  It's basically a big rectangle.  Pancake and I love the look of an old farmhouse - it's clean, simple, and lends itself to many different styles.  Our first home, the one we sold before buying this land, was a farmhouse.  Kensington used to be farmland, so there are examples of farmhouses sprinkled throughout town.  We want to create a modern version of the traditional style we love so much.

Pretty soon, the forms will come off.  We aren't quite done with the foundation yet though.  We couldn't use a typical form size - they were either too short to give us an adequate ceiling height in the basement, or so tall that the house would have been pushed out of the ground too much.  So, the forms you see above are the shorter version.  Once they come off, the concrete crew will build custom wood forms to get the foundation walls to the right height.  The rebar you see sticking out of the top of the foundation walls will tie the first and second pours together.

Bye for now,
​TJ