November 29, 2003 (cont'd): This is it. The finishing of the slab.  Scott and Carl are putting lots of soul and lots of concrete (to the tune of 29 cubic yards) into this day's work.

I was not able to be around when this part was happening so I only get to live it through these pictures like you do.  Kriss was there to take pictures so that we could see the process.  After the concrete was all hardened, the following Sunday Marilyn and Doug came over and helped Kriss and I remove the forms form the East side of the slab so that we could get started on building all of the perimeter drains.  The perimeter drains run all around the slab to protect it from water that might settle around it and to take any roof water that comes down the downspouts off to the City Of Redmond's stormwater system.

       In this picture, Kriss and I prepare the hole where the distribution box will go. You can see the box sitting there next to Kriss with pipe coming out of it. We need to get It really level and down to a grade that gets the water away from the foundation.  Right when we had the box set in place, the rain came HARD.  The trench filled with a few inches of water during the hardest rainfall.  We worked a lot to lay down gravel and

pipe in the rain over the next few days. I know, the one picture here looks like Kriss is the only one working, but I did pick up the shovel at least twice!  We'll put down some fabric that keeps the dirt out, then a few inches of rock, the a perforated pipe, then a couple more inches of rock, then a solid pipe, then a few MORE inches of rocks.  This process will take the tire off one of our

wheel barrows and wear a hole through the middle fingertip of each of my leather gloves. Shoveling rocks is fun (we keep telling ourselves that).