Soooo much progress was made on the garage last week. In fact, we have an actual garage now.

There’s more work to be done, of course. But it looks like a garage rather than a pool. In fact, Ellie and I drove the car in over the weekend.

We are 17 days into construction.

The exterior walls are all framed. The walls turned out to be our first hiccup because our contractor wasn’t happy with how the bottom plate of the existing walls was positioned in relation to the pool deck.

It looks like the plate had been set in place and then the concrete of the pool deck had been poured up against the wood. He wanted the plate higher up, so he reverse engineered footings all the way around the garage.

He braced the ceiling, so that the roof didn’t fall down. Then cut out the original plate and about 6 inches off the studs. Then he put in a new (floating) bottom plate, squeezed forms in underneath and poured new footings.

This has been our biggest (not so big) surprise so far, so not tragic.

For the side wall on the new addition, he decided to reuse the existing wall (which I’m grateful for since lumber is so expen$ive these days). After a lot of figuring, bracing and some extra help, they hopped the wall (all 20 feet long with the windows still in place) out 10 feet.

I love construction, so it’s neat to see the problem-solving, planning and building process up close.

The doors are all framed in as well. Seeing the garage openings made it feel much more real. It was also an opportunity to validate some of my planning. I am really happy with the dimensions and position (there’s a good amount of space to tuck recycling boxes along the side and still get out of the car).

They also mapped out the mudroom for me, so I could check the height of the floor, location of the doors and size of the landing. I really appreciate how conscientious and inclusive they are being.

And finally, FINALLY we have no pool. The excavator returned last Wednesday and gravel trucks started showing up a few minutes later. The excavator dumped bucketfuls of gravel into the pool and our contractor compacted it. It took most of the day, but by 5pm the pool was full.

The excavator returned the next day to finish backfilling all of the foundation, lay the driveway and take care of a bunch of other jobs that I had. Low spots were filled in, bumpy spots were leveled, rocks were moved, stumps were extracted. Soooo many things were crossed off my wishlist.

Though it felt like an expensive two days, having the excavator, two machines, our contracting crew and about 15 truckloads (250 tonnes) of gravel.

Ontario is under a whole bunch of new restrictions due to a huge wave of COVID infections, but residential construction that is already in progress is allowed to continue. So next on the agenda is framing the roof of the extension and the mudroom and pouring the garage floor.

Anyone else in the middle of a construction project (big or small)? Have you had any expensive days recently? Anyone else crossing things off your to-do list that have been on there for a long time?