Foundations, here we go again. It doesn’t feel that long ago we were putting the profiles up, but it was a couple of months ago now. We are finally ready to start the footings. The profiles need to be exact and the first few steps perfect. Can’t wait to have a base to build on. The footings are coming up 300mm and then one house gets two rows of blocks and the other one gets three rows. This will ensure both houses are high and dry.

Murray gets the Brough street house ready for inspection from council and we move on to Stromness St on Friday. We have booked in the concrete, the concrete pump man, the block layer, digger man, plumber and sparky. Everyone is lined up.

On Sunday, we went up to Jimmy’s farm and did a trailer load of firewood. This is his way of thanking us for the help for the trees. Well we are more than happy with that. It needs to dry out but that will keep us going for a long time! We ran around the rest of the day getting jobs done. By the time it was hopping into bed I was exhausted.

Monday; Rowan is getting sick so he is not much help today, but a lot more than I would probably be! So I am head lacky assisting Murray. We get the rebar in and ready for council. There is more bracing and small things to be done before the concrete is poured but at least the main bit is done. Rowan had a haltering afternoon and didn’t tell us until we finished. He thought we may as well continue as he won’t know the outcome for a while.

Turns out our engineer is not happy with the testing of the ground. Dean (the tester) is adamant it is good and that James is using old readings. It is all a bit confusing, basically the engineer isn’t happy and we now have to wait to see what is next.

Best case scenario: James accepts Deans testing and newer readings that are different from what he uses.

Medium case scenario: Dean takes a sample from the quarry and gets it lab tested and we have now pleased the engineer.

Worse case scenario: the test comes back not to James’s liking and we have to take down all of work we have done for the past week. I assume dig out some of the gravel or all of the gravel and start again.

Welcome to our nightmare!