Getting down to the foundation

Thursday would have been a great day to be an eagle soaring over the building site. All the big machinery, piles of midden soil, workers scurrying about, enormous septic tanks, visits from the "overseers", and then the discovery about the foundation... Jim summarizes it below-

'

We did have a setback on the foundation. Engineering required that the waterside stem wall be cut out in four locations where the posts sit and additional reinforcing steel be embedded in the concrete. Also, three flood vents have to be installed in that wall so three more sections had to be cut out.  I had a concrete cutter come and cut the stem wall in those locations. When we pushed the sections over, I discovered that there was no rebar attaching the stem wall to the foundation. oops! 

 I removed all the stem wall from this length of wall and will drill and epoxy rebar into the foundation and pour the new stem with all of the required reinforcement for the steel columns and the flood vents.  ......should have a handle on the additional cost soon .'

Day two of the dig...

From Jim Hall:  "Day two went smoothly and we were almost done when the two state archaeologists and the Tulalip tribe representatives showed up. Work continued and eventually they were about to leave when one of the state people picked up a bone and said it could be human. Our archeologist said it did not look human to him and it would be unusual in an excavation of this size to find one human bone. Unsatisfied, the state forensics specialist was sent pictures and we had to stop working for four hours until the forensics guy said it was whale bone.

They were all tired and cranky by this time and just waved their arms around, reiterated the monitoring requirements, generally behaved in an official manner and then left.

We were able to then get back to work and finished around 7pm."

Excuse me, but these are our tax dollars at work...

One thing that I loved to see was the saving of the "HALL" emblem on our old stoop. We will make this part of the new home. Any suggestions?

Thank you Jim for your photos and notes!

Notes from the field

Here's a summary of Day 1 of the digging from our contractor Jim Hall:

 ......'It has been pretty interesting. After all those National Geographics, there I was bagging the rocks and the bones. We found no human remains today; only animal bones and lots of shells and rocks from fire pits. The awl was a big find.

The site was difficult for them to interpret. As you look at the sidewalls of the excavation, it appears that the material has been put down in clear layers as opposed to disturbed and all mixed up.

Then, out of nowhere, a piece of brick shows up in a layer. Suddenly you are no longer 600 years back in time and the material that looked undisturbed is determined to be disturbed. It was interesting to listen to the discussions  between the archeologist and his assistant as they analyzed their findings. I was surprised at how much speculation is stacked upon speculation until the working theory collapses or seems to stand up.

Even then, there was the possibility that someone else might interpret their findings differently so the material had to be bagged and catalogued.

When they leave the site, the material is washed and every item in the bags is looked at, sorted, and weighed and who knows what else.

We were just getting started when it occurred to me that Dave, as a Native American, might have some difficulty with this process especially if we found human remains. I gave him the option to leave but he had no problem working on the project. In fact he asked the his wife be the second sifter.

My initial reaction was no but our archeologist was all for the idea. He is expecting either an archaeologist or lawyer from one of the tribes to show up and having a Native American working on the site was a big bonus.

If all goes well, we should be done with this phase tomorrow.'

Time

I thought it might be "island time", then I learned that it's "waterfront time".
But for us it's been  "crazy time"!

 As a matter of fact it has been a little sad thinking of the old house.  The pad is all that's left, and  it's really ' hard' to spend any time there.

On Tuesday the archeological permit finally came through.

The digging has begun. Luckily there's not too much to excavate, septic, small addition, deck supports.

Stay tuned....

More delays!

Now the foundation and other digging is scheduled to start on May 17th.

We're waiting for our archeological permit. We thought we had it but apparently not. Although we knew that building on the beach would be complicated, we had no idea that just getting underway would take so long.

Meanwhile in our Seattle home we're finishing up a little remodel to allow us to rent out the basement. We have two lovely tenants who are excited about being here, sharing the backyard, and taking care of Maki and the house when we travel. This  makes selling the house less urgent. Hooray!

So we're enjoying our mutant tulip

and a sweet pair of ducks I just shot- (oooh... with a camera!) Perched on our roof, ready to settle in on our neighbor's front yard.

Enjoying the garden

And just being lazy!