It was very exciting to see a large pile of cement blocks in our driveway when we got home from work yesterday. The block starts to be laid on Monday, which will mark the start of building up instead of digging down! I have no idea if this is all the block they will need but it does not seem like enough to me. Today they are working on grouting the last set of underpinnings which is a tough job because the concrete grout has to be tightly packed into the back of the holes. At least it's not 90 degrees out. Once this is finished, the underpinning process will be finished. It took about 2 weeks total once the main hole was dug out. Obviously other work went on at the same time (including building the garage foundation, finishing digging the rest of the hole, and pouring the footings for the foundation).
After talking with our architect today during our Friday weekly meeting, we decided to contact our local pest control company, Ward Pest Control, to ask about termite prevention. We were originally thinking we would do termite protection when we finished the project, but Kaye (our architect) told us that there are some treatments that go under the gravel of the foundation. Arlington has a lot of termite issues so we figured it would be wealth worth it to have it checked now and see what a pretreatment would cost. Another neighbor who did a similar project mentioned to me that if you live near a house which is undergoing major renovations, it's a good idea to be sure your house's termite treatment is up-to-date. Termites may be dislodged from their happy home in your neighbor's house and may decide to move into yours where there is less noise to bother them! There are several renovations going on in our neighborhood (including one directly behind), so it's probably a good idea to get this taken care of as early as possible.
We also talked about the door configurations for our house again to be sure that we know what we are getting for each. We recently changed our original plans so that we have more operable doors for exiting out onto our back deck/patio. Kaye wanted to be sure that we understood that the doors would not all look exactly the same, and that's fine with us - it's worth it for the increased air flow.
