Inspection - Done!

We had our footing inspection last week and passed! Then my friend/teacher/mentor Quentin Wilson came by for his "inspection". I was just as nervous about that one as the "real" one!!! He gave us his stamp of approval but suggested we add more bracing. So - it was back to work for me. I doubled the number of braces and then spent a couple of days back-filling. Also had to add a 20' length of rebar bent and attached to the footing rebar to act as a ground.

Here's Quentin

Here's Quentin performing an "inspection" with the help of Tex.

With the inspection passed it has been time to give serious thought to the next step. Because we have one long adobe wall, we realized that has to go up before the trusses can go up so in conjunction with putting up the posts and beam, we will also be stacking an adobe wall - and hopefully the weather will cooperate so we can start on that next week. We ordered adobes and they arrived last week. Five or six years ago I took a number of adobe classes with the above mentioned Quentin which were wonderful and helped me to realize that building a house is not rocket science. It gave me the confidence to take on this huge task. I helped on a number of projects for other folks so to finally get our own adobes was a real trip. This is really happening!!!

The adobe truck arrives!

Adobes with Pedernal

Yesterday our friend Ramey came over with his tractor (we don't know what we'd do without you, Ramey!!!) and smoothed out all the dirt mounds in preparation for the arrival of the cement trucks TOMORROW!

Ready for cement!

Yesterday was the 7th anniversary of our moving up here to Otra Banda. Tomorrow will see the pouring of the footings - a huge step and one that brings us closer to realizing our dream of living in our own hand-built house! It all feels a bit surreal.