The Brandt Blog

Greetings, Family and Friends – We write this whilst in the Alps – having just departed Milan for Bern, Switzerland. Milan isn’t what I’d call a “classic” Italian vacation city (i.e. Rome, Venice, Florence…) but has plenty to see, do and eat. It’s in northern Italy, you know and the Milanese would tell you that […]

It seems a little premature, but Anne ordered today the Electricity and Natural Gas.  We’re not sure where the gas will “be plugged into” but as we see in the photo, the electrical box is ready to receive from ComEd the meter.  For reference, this is located on the wall of the master bathroom. We also […]

Today we visited the site with our good friend Madeline Sefton…who was photographed showing off her amazing balance, agility and courage.  You see, our plan was to first hop to the garage mound and then trek along the foundation top to the window well on the south side.  A good plan…failed.  We had to drawbridge our […]

Those concrete guys can really work fast.  I showed up at the work-site at 8:45am after they had been at it for only (since 7:00am) and as we can see…they were nearly finished with the pour! Of course, with no ladder immediately visible and that they had literally worked themselves into a corner I wondered […]

The plumbers showed up this week with their shovels, plastic pipe and a pump. After digging in the hot sun (welcome, hot sun!) trenches to hold the pipes that will become the drains/ H2O supplies for the basement…the plumbers pumped out the accumulated rain water that had settled beneath the stones.  After this important step, […]

What else can be said?  The foundation walls are up and, although not captured in these photos, waterproofed.  The waterproof guy was actually working on Friday night and Saturday morning. We sure like how Rick gets his contractors motivated to work a little extra when the rain sets them off the pace.

I dropped by the site on the way to work and saw the first of the cement trucks.  One of the guys was directing traffic around the street, (the girls were told to turn off when they drove by on their way to school) and the boom truck was extended about 75 feet to the […]

Thanks to Al and his Concrete Crew we now have the forms in place for what will become the foundation walls.  I was hoping to get an interior shot but there was no way to climb over the forms – and with them being 9 feet tall I couldn’t make the jump. We expect the concrete […]

We weren’t scheduled to get the footings in until Tuesday (May 13) but because of weekend rain, the contractor’s other project was inaccessible by the cement conveyor truck.  One client’s loss turned out to be our gain…as Al + Crew brought the hardware to our site and got to work. I stopped by at lunch where […]