Building on Dreams

Chapter 44 - Memorial Day Weekend

Week followed productive week in May as the work on Greg's property continued. Finishing items which needed to be ordered were selected by Greg and Susan on weekends and communicated to Mr. Thompson during the week. And with every visit, both Greg's contractors were eager to show him what they'd accomplished since he was last there.

The pouring of the concrete for the bridge supports happened right on time that first week in May, while Mr. Van Kirk arranged to have the back hoe and the grader delivered early and immediately began to dig through the soft topsoil on the north side of the hill to expose the rock surface where the garage entrance would be in only a few days. At the same time the official driveway into the property was being graded, defined and gravel spread to protect the topsoil in those areas of the property.

Mr. Craig was back the week after that, working on creating the space in the rock which would eventually become the garage. As it turned out, the orientation for the garage was angled differently than the tunnel they'd created to access the cave back in February. In fact the tunnel ran through the garage at an angle, so that as the space for it was created, the original tunnel opening gradually disappeared, swallowed by the garage, although at the back the tunnel continued far deeper into the hill than the garage ever would, so easily two thirds of the original tunnel remained unchanged. The soil and rock they extracted from the hill became part of the fill which was crushed, flattened and spread out evenly in front of the new opening, eventually becoming part of the drive that would lead back up the hill, creating an even bigger change there.

During that same week, Mr. Thompson was also creating major changes on the south side of the hill. The steel beams arrived and were lowered into place by cranes atop the bridge supports in the valley. Mr. Van Kirk's crew had cooperated admirably with Mr. Thompson's workers to ensure the spaces in the hill the beams were driven into were ready. The forms for the odd, triangle part of the foundation were in place beneath the beams, ready to be poured before they became to inaccessible from the top. They were located at the edge of the upper valley instead of the second one, and so they were higher than the foundation already in place for the hotel wings. It certainly was a start for connecting them to the bridge part of the house, but from the forms alone, it was far from clear how that would be done, especially when the work for the hotel wings themselves seemed to be at a much more advanced stage. The framing for the hotel wings progressing with both the internal and external walls, windows and doorways defined, which meant that by the end of the third week, their future guest rooms were actually starting to look like rooms.

That third week in May was also the week before the Memorial Day holiday. Preparation for cement work continued on both sides of the hill, with Mr. Van Kirk's crew creating lips around the newly bored entrance to the garage to hold back the top soil away from the opening and to stabilize the hillside. Those were ready to pour on Friday of that week, at the same time the men working with Mr. Sato set some of the boulders in place around the opening of the cave and were ready to pour more of the finishing concrete there, and Mr. Thompson was pouring the cruder grade into the forms for the last of the foundation.

Steelwork and welding was the other thing occupying Mr. Thompson's crew. Cross-beams were being added to the bridge house substructure, making it ready to serve as a foundation. Both crews had come to anticipate Greg's end-of-week visits on Fridays and both were ready for him shortly after noon that week, just before the holiday weekend, even though the cement was still being poured.

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"Are you ready?" Greg asked Zackary when he came home from school on that Friday before the Memorial Day holiday.

"To see the house?" Zackary asked as he set his backpack down.

"To visit our construction site," Greg said. "I think you will find there is a lot to look at, even though there isn't too much of the house present just yet."