Underestimating time

When I started this account, one of my goals was to be transparent about mistakes. Well, it didn’t take long to make my first one. Here goes.

I seriously underestimated how long it would take to insulate the foundation walls and build the foundation drain. In my head everything seemed pretty quick. Take the insulation: you glue a big 4×8 panel to the wall, tape the seams, and then move on to the next one. But the cold glue was hard to squeeze out of the tubes, the panels curled away slightly from the walls so I had to build braces, and it took time to measure and cut the sheets to fit around irregular shapes. Beyond these challenges, I bought 48 sheets of 4×8′ insulation, totaling 1536 square feet. Even simple tasks can take a long, long time when there’s that much square footage involved.

The foundation drain was another story. The ABS plastic pipe was easy (almost fun) to work with, but covering it with gravel and filter fabric was tougher. I ended up pulling an almost-all-nighter moving over 20,000 pounds of drainage rock with a wheelbarrow. I finished at sunrise, just as the excavator was rolling up to do the foundation backfill. Without some last-minute help from friends (pictured), I don’t think I’d have made it in time.

Photo taken October 21, 2019. Posted December 17, 2019.