The Great Wall of Centerville

The Great Wall of Centerville

Mark Sethares and his assistant Frank have been working on the foundation wall form setup since last week.  It actually only took them 2 days to lug those 100 pound boards around and put them into place.  It was done with a lot of muscle and precision with the aid of a laser level.

 Sunday was a day off for everyone including us. We snuck off to Provincetown and went out to the Race Point Light annual Open House. From the top of the lighthouse we could see nothing but sand dunes, beach grass and Rosa Ragosa. But later when we walked along the beach Chris spotted spouts of water that he thought might be a whale. But after watching for a minute we could see that the spray was being caused by gannets knifing into the water to catch some of the schools of fish that team in the water off Race Point.

 Monday the pumper truck reappeared with 5 concrete mixers in tow. Once again the concrete truck nosed up to the pumper so that the concrete could be spewed into the hopper and pumped up the tube. Surprisingly each truck carried 11 yards of concrete, which translates to 80,000 pounds or 40 tons. I keep questioning all this fuss for such a little cottage. But regardless of its size it is going to be sitting on one heck of a strong foundation.

Once all the cement was settled into the forms,  Chris fished through his pockets looking for a 2011 coin to mark the date.  No luck. Paul didn’t have one either. I searched the car but came up empty. Paul had a 2010 Jefferson nickel and Chris justified that as good enough because that was when this project really started. Then Chris stuck a ladder down next to the footing. With a screwdriver he wrote our initials and the date into the concrete. Then I climbed down and smacked my hand right into it. Chris followed suit. Next we wrote an acronym for the motto we have been using for this project. I’ll give you a clue. We took it from the movie Win/Win that we unexpectedly saw instead of Jane Eyre.

With a prediction of rain forecast for Tuesday Mark and Frank started to strip the boards off. The May weather hasn’t been great, but nobody’s complained. Frank kept saying that some vandals had written all over his concrete.  We thought that was pretty funny because we were all in on the joke.

 At my grandparents summerhouse, on the steps going down to the waterfront, there is a tiny baby footprint that I stop and look at every time I go down the stairs. .  When I arrived on Cape Cod for my first Summer I was only 6 weeks old. That was also the summer the concrete for those steps was poured. And that was over 50 years ago. So who knows who will look at our handprints in the concrete 50 years from now?

Once again Mark and Frank wrestled the form boards into the metal cages and then hoisted the cages onto the flatbed with the truck’s crane.   It seems to us that it all happened so fast.  But we know that it took a lot of energy and expertise to pull this off. 

We think ourselves lucky to have had this great construction team working on our behalf.  Tomorrow the civil engineers confirm the height and dimensions of the foundation. And then we hope that the building department will work as fast as everyone else has, and do their part by accepting the structural plans and issuing the next building permit.