let the building begin!
started today on our first truly non-destructive mod to the house. we filled in the gap in the floor where the fireplace was.
this was the first time i worked with concrete, so it was a crash course in mixing and pouring, screeding, floating and all that fun stuff. probably wasn't the best area on which to learn this stuff, given that it's triangular, in a corner, and what with having to use the existing floor as the screed surface, there was no place for the excess to fall off. on top of that, in hindsight it appears that i bought the wrong float for the job (hand float instead of a bull float). end result: the finish is insanely lumpy. probably not too big a deal, since it appears to be mostly cosmetic and i'll be pouring leveler across the entire floor anway. i'll confirm with the mason tomorrow when he comes to get the rest of his stuff.
there's still one problem with the area around the fireplace that will need to be dealt with eventually. there's a fair amount of water buildup inside the base of the wall where the chimney is. when the area under the fireplace was fully excavated, there was a fair amount of water seeping in and pooling there. it doesn't seem to be as bad now that i've filled in this space, but i can still see a bunch of wetness in the first 2 rows of block. this has probably been like this for quite some time, but the thickness of all the fireplace layers helped mask the problem. i'm going to seal it as best i can once the concrete cures, but i think we might eventually have to put in a french drain. before we do that, though, i want to investigate the possibility of reworking the slope along the side of the house to try and divert water towards the back of the house. right now, there's a bit of a depression right around where the chimney is, plus the neighbors' yard is a higher elevation than ours, so everything heads in that direction when it rains.