John was concerned about me helping
We finally got the foundation walls poured! But the conflict between professional builder and homeowner came to a head for the first time. It’s like Dagwood Bumstead watching the plumber work under Dagwood’s sink and offering hints until the plumber pays him to not watch or turns the wrench over to him.
(Millennials and Gen-Yers, Dagwood is an old newspaper comics guy who’s still around, by the way.)
I decided we should wheelbarrow the concrete to the stair tower foundations. John, the professional concrete guy said okay. It wasn’t really that much ‘crete and a pump truck would cost around $600, and the truck would have had to park in the street and pass its pump hose some 60 horizontal feet, to clear the house.
John expressed some concern to Mike about homeowners helping with concrete. Said he had had some bad experiences. Mike assured him I was not your average homeowner when it came to construction stuff.
I’m so embarrassed
So, let’s see, what did I do? I dumped a load of concrete that was for the floor of the stair tower on top of the foundation wall which had already been leveled off and, in the process, the front of the wheelbarrow whacked part of the form. Doug was able to juke the form board back in place.
Then, as we were topping off the north addition foundations, I was crossing the plank that spanned the open excavation over to the top of foundation wall, when the board I stepped on snapped and I sprawled across the top of the wall, bruising my wrist and ribs in the process.
Mike comments to John, “Now you’ll have some more homeowner horror stories to tell.” John says he is prepared for himself or one of his workers to get injured on the job, but he’s never lost a homeowner so he wasn’t sure what he would do.
But we got the foundations in, though the north wall bowed quite a bit at the top. But that was not where I hit, so I chalked that up to maybe a concrete professional faux pas, though I kept my mouth shut.