My Summer of Construction

The first week back at school, my son had to write about what he did over the summer. I figured it should go on the website. ~Simon

This summer I built my house.  For the last ten years my dad has been planning the design of my new house, and last year we started construction!  For the last year we have been building our new house. You want to hear something really cool? It’s an underground house!

This summer I’ve worked so much and spent many Saturdays at construction.  It’s very exhausting, but there are some parts I have enjoyed though.  These include pouring the cement; we do this in areas such as the downstairs floor, the walls of the basement, and the garage back wall.

Making arches is fun too! To make the arches, we use the molds that my dad made and pour cement into them. The next day we take off the molds and there are nicely made arches waiting for us to polish and make cool patterns on. So far we have six out of eleven done and only two of them half way polished, while the others haven’t even been smoothed yet!

Another thing that is super fun is when my mom needs me to climb up on top of the bedroom frame to tie wires so that it is ready for cement to get poured inside the frame. I really enjoy climbing high and it’s really cool how you can observe everything below you.

My favorite thing to do is to find frogs and turtles. The basement isn’t covered up yet, so lots of frogs and baby snapping turtles fall in and die. Each day I try to find and catch every frog and turtle I can before they dry up.  I have to shovel out their dead bodies. The most I have saved in one day was ten frogs and two turtles.

During the summer, I also enjoyed swimming in my grandparents’ pool.  I played at the park, visited museums, and I also played at my friends’ houses. The greatest thing I did this summer though was building my house.

( if you want to know more about how I built my house go to http://www.homeintheearth.com )

Gallery

This frog was dried by cement, so it pretty much turned to stone, not like the other frogs that were simply dehydrated

The boys helped with tying the lath onto the structure

David came out for setting up the first couple arches

Playing with cousins on our sandy site

I think he was taking the panels off the wall

Taking a break on the roof

Playing with other friends

Picture time

David learning to weld

Zack and David working together.

David inspecting the damage

David thought the new floor was pretty cool

David helping to tear out the old mess

David working on the concrete slag floor, he did a great job and filled up 33 5 gallon buckets of rubble.

David helping me get the earth tubes into the trench

David helping with getting peastone around the footing drain

First day, climbing on the dozer before anything was disturbed