Saturday, August 4, 2012

Slab

Future home of the 20' x 40' slab.  We hired Vic's Concrete out of Gonzales to pour the slab.

These 10 guys showed up on time and hit the ground running.  They were fantastic.


The backhoe guy, Shorty, is the best in Gonzales County.  He rocked the house.  I got his autograph.

The site is level and now the fun begins.





Jose, the foreman, trenched the footings around the perimeter of the slab.  He kept his tires aligned with an extra set of strings off the batter boards - genius.




They dug 4' deep holes to set the weight bearing poles in.  The slab will be poured around the poles for added stability.


The studio building is a "T" style Quonset building.  That means that the building leans on one wall.  The five 4" x 4" x 15' square pipes will hold the weight of the building. 




Getting those poles level was a heck of job.


Here I am checking it all out.  Looks good.


The guys got in a line and tied off the re bar like pros.  (I guess they are!)  It would have taken JB and I hours to get this done!

These guys had the slab ready for concrete right after lunch.

It took two and a quarter concrete trucks to fill the slab up. 



While the guys were pushing concrete around, Shorty, the backhoe guy, cleared out some brush from around our trees. I told you he was awesome!


Shorty cleared the area where the bus will go.  He saved us days of work.

This tree was COVERED with all kinds of crazy brush and vines.  I think I heard it take a deep breath as Shorty drove off with his backhoe.

The slab is poured, smooth and set up.  The weather turned overcast and the possibility of rain increased dramatically.  We were excited about the rain but right now????


The weather turned dark and it looked like rain was going to happen.  Jose power trowelled the slab and got is smooth before the rain came down. 

Drizzle was coming down when the guys scrambled to get plastic ready to cover the slab.  Jose finished up trowelling and jumped off the slab.  The guys covered the slab with plastic and the rain came pouring down.  Perfect timing.  We stood under the trees in the rain enjoying a refreshing beverage.  Perfect day!

So by 6:30 pm, they were finished, cleaned up and loaded up with all their stuff.  They poured a 20' x 40' slab in a day.  Remarkable!

Since we don't have water out there yet, Vic let us use his 50 gallon water barrels to throw on the slab once a day for a few days.   Isn't this exciting!


Friday, August 3, 2012

On the road again...

We are moved out and ready to roll.  Jim Bob is going to drive the bus over to the RV park and the kids and I are following in the truck.


Here we go!






Here we are at the KC's RV park.  The bus made it just fine and we can't wait to get all settled in. 

Sweet Dreams

The best part of the bus:  we are upsizing to a king size bed.  Hells yes.  That queen size bed was way too small for us and none of us slept well.  So we are making a king size bed fit into our tiny little space.  Here is Jim Bob building the bed at around midnight or so...







The mattress will sit on this platform about 36" high.  Underneath the bed will be our "classroom" area.  All of the kids' furniture, toys, books and our clothes.  We were worried about how much headroom that would leave us but it turned out fine!

The book cases we had in the house are 36" high and 16" wide.  Jim Bob built the bed frame around the bookcases.   

We bought the mattress from Ikea.  We lucked out that it came all rolled up because we were sweating a king size mattress fitting through the door.




 



We are all moved in!  Well, almost.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Two sweet words: Air conditioning


So the bus is basically a huge tin can or metal can with zero insulation and lots of drafty windows - not the best living situation in Texas.  With all those factors, we decided to go with two 10, 000 btu air conditioning units.  We put one in the front of the bus, above the heater, and one in the back of the bus, above the toilet.

The windows have a 3/4" plywood layer, 1/2" foam layer and then the sheet metal on the outside.

Jim Bob used a jigsaw to cut out the shape in the window.


Another hole!

Hunter and Jim Bob putting the window unit into the window.

Air conditioner almost in!  Yay!