A day at the beach

I finally got back to the house yesterday afternoon. The basement is amazing: with no stairs and no extaneous walls, it looks huge. And now the floor is nicely covered with a layer of sand - it really does look like a beach. Lee explained all the layers that went down before the sand came in, including stone, a moisture barrier, and a lovely shiny blue material and then the sand. I guess the pea stone and the sand was shot in through one of the windows, filling up a space over 8 feet high and then had to be raked all over the floor. I'm really sorry I missed it, but Lee has photos that I will get one of these days. In the meantime here's the finished product:

It seems that the drainage system that they devised for under the floor is also wrking. In spite of torrential and persistant rain yesterday, the sand was dry. Yay.

The HVAC ductwork for the indoor outdoor room has been buried in the floor so we can only see where the ducts emerge to be connected. The same is true for the plumbing pipes. It is all so neat.

Outside, by the vestibule door, I noticed the heating cables were laid. I don't think they were there before I left, but it's been so long I don't really remember. Anyway, here they are.

This morning the concrete is supposed to be poured for the basement floor. So I'm going to the house now to see how that goes.