100 feet of trench in 72 hours.... Packin' Dirt Prepping for the build.

hi i'm alex archbull and i've been buying and selling antiques since i was 9 years old from basements to scrap yards i'll look just about anywhere i can to find lost antiques and collectibles and sometimes i'll go big and buy everything with my wife and kids we run an antique shop in edmonton alberta canada filled with some of the most unique items we can find i never know what's going to happen or who i'm going to meet this is our life this is our adventure and this is curiosity inc from home honey [Music] well good morning everybody i am headed to my store to dig a hole hopefully the last hole i'll have to dig um we have been putting in this four inch insulation uh frost barrier around the foundation for the past few days i took a day off yesterday so we had rain and jason and i went off to saskatchewan to get some shelves and hans is out of town so i'm just going to dig the last hole myself this morning i've been working seven days a week if you think that having your own business is easy it's rewarding but it's not easy it's a lot of work but i'd say the the big difference or the big benefit of having your own business is that um you're doing it for you you're doing it for your family you're doing it for your community you're not doing it for some company that maybe um seems far away and distant you get to see and reap the rewards yourself so it makes putting in these seven day work weeks uh somewhat worthwhile but on a day like today where my kids are at home and it's sunny outside i'd much rather be at home with them i'm going to try and get this whole dog and then spend the rest of the day with the family doing fun stuff what i wouldn't give just to even lie on my hammock for five minutes but hopefully that'll be my reward if i get everything done today so back to the store digging holes and uh hopefully making some good progress got shovel ready it's not that bad i have to fill this portion here this is the foam it's four inch stuff it's got to go down quite far this is the section i have left to do and i started on it the other day it didn't quite get finished so figure today will be that day it's nearly there it shouldn't take me too long to get this done but then i have to fill everything in and settle some of that dirt down because it's not anywhere near where it needs to be clean up the pad a bit all this because tomorrow the guys are coming to start hopefully getting this wall in we want to get this all dug out and done before they get here off to work i think that has it that is about can't tell from this angle but that's about four feet deep and just a little over two feet wide then go get the foam and see if it fits [Music] foam is in let's have to start backfilling it all use most of my backfill all the way along so i'm gonna have to start grabbing it from the other piles down there and putting it in the pit once i get this filled i can go home all right well i got back in this morning after a long night of rest digging that hole was super fun hans came back in though while i was away and started back filling and compacting the space that i just finished up so we are now in a place where we can start getting some sidewalk blocks down and make this a little bit more finished looking you might notice behind me too that we're starting to get a snow fence or some fencing put up for safety with construction starting we don't want all the neighborhood kids to come in and you know get hurt or injured or anything like that i'll have to keep our neighborhood geese out too but this is gonna get closed off as it's getting closed off right now and construction is gonna begin right away here i on the other hand have to get some more of these uh patio blocks down we're gonna do it all the way down all the way along the side there um so we have a little walkway to get from the front to the back that's my job today and uh you like these guys finish up behind me okay i managed to get um and these are all recycled we dug these out of the ground these actually used to run along the other side of the building but we've been um trying to recycle as much as we can here so why not i had them already got as far down as we can hans is going to come back later today and uh add some more material and pack the rest of this down and then this side should be pretty well done but the magic is about to happen the guys are getting the fencing put up and we've got frederick here this is the man uh frederick you are the guy who's gonna be making all the magic happen for me here for this building uh thanks thanks so much alex uh the infamous contractor has arrived infamous do you know something i don't know he's the guy that buries the clients in the ground when he's done a job no so why don't you tell us what the what your next steps are for the project yeah we're expecting uh lumber here tomorrow for sure and then uh we're gonna start laying things out and framing it up so and lumber is kind of like gold right now it is gold and so you are arriving really advertised that we got lumber here but yeah but you are we are locking it all up at everything so it'll be safe yeah it's crazy the steps you have to take now to make sure things are secure but everything's getting locked up which is great different times um so what do you have to do before the wall goes up i just square things up snap some lines if we can and then uh yeah get a game plan of uh where we want to start and and uh yeah get a bit of a procedure of uh to get the best the best way to do things so now do we have the steel all ready for this or are you going to start with the wood first uh we're most likely going to do our wood walls for sure first yeah okay like i mentioned you earlier because this is a non-combustible steel framed wall we want to do that after it's a non-typical build typically it's in between steel structure so hss and uh that uh that way you have something attached your steel stud and framing tube where we don't it's all wood that we're attaching to so we need our wood in place first so what we're actually going to do is build a temporary wall for our trusses to sit on yeah and then we can attach our top plate and our bottom plate and stick frame our steel studs from there okay great yeah so the reason we're doing steel settle on this wall is because i'm very close to my neighboring building in fact in commercial sites you can be right at the property line that's why when you go to a downtown the buildings are all touching commercial sites can be zero so i could have built actually right up to the wall but i wanted to have a little walkway so we could still access the backyard so we decided to build it away and i think ultimately that'll give us a bit of flexibility if we ever need to work on the building or do things uh but this side is all typical wood frame because it borders with my building so we don't have the same concerns i think at the end of the day we're doing what double drywall inside yeah i mean everything is still fire-rated for the most part um so that it's not a non-combustible wall but it's it's wood frame but still double drywall so it's a two hour rating on that wall yeah it would be an hour rating on the back really difficult i mean this place that we're building is gonna be very safe and secure um probably compared to the 110 year old building i've got sitting next door but um yeah i mean things are looking good and you know what all these pipes and stuff are for i think we were talking about this before we've got the radon which you put in for the gases we've got a drain for a sink that will be in that goes in the wall floor drain floor drain uh toilet vent um clean out and i think that's another sink drain but at least we got all that stuff in place before because could you imagine what do they do if you ever worked on a site where they poured this lab and they forgot to put all that stuff in yeah i mean it happens and what do they do just chisel it all out yeah you have to open things up and do some revisions for sure wow okay well i don't think we'll have to worry about that this go around but the the one challenge we had was the vent that's there we had to do some last minute moving to get this thing in the right place but you're saying this normally would go up through the wall but they've asked for it to stay outside so you might have to box that in and put it all the way up right that's right okay chase there and tie it up and just have a box out inside your finishing there well the bonus for me this morning that i'm super happy about is the guys uh doug and dustin over there you guys are the magic team over there dustin you got a new name dave oh i'm sorry dave i that's i'm i just decided to rename dave i should know see dustin's my middle name dave was my father-in-law's name that should be pretty easy for me i can't he said d and d or the two called works it would call the worst oh see that's embarrassing but the guys well we only just met like 15 minutes ago so i can be forgiven um but uh dave and dustin um cleaned all the dirt and mud and debris off that we left here the other day uh that was actually on my mind i was losing sleep over it uh i i actually had dreams i was digging that trench because myself hans and my friend paul aka rock and roll paul dug out oh what probably 60 what what are these walls 40 46 foot three yeah okay yeah so i guess that's more like a hundred feet of trench that we had to dig out it was a lot of work and we did it with just a couple spades and a wheelbarrow and uh what we did is we would dig a hole and um we'd pile the dirt and then we dig another hole and hop scotch that dirt into the next one we kind of went back and forth filling and digging and filling and digging until it was all done but i was worried it wouldn't get done in time for today but we managed to make it all happen no it should be good all right so we'll keep checking in on you and uh for now i guess uh the magic is all in your hands well you guys got the little storage trailer here and look who arrived it's the one and only hans i saw the work you did the other day perfect which looked yeah it looked really good and i started laying some of the blocks down oh you got some other ones in there yeah i finished off what you had on the side yeah i see one of them is a little bit broken though so yeah but then keep them a little dryer and a little bit cleaner yeah i might have to buy a couple of replacement blocks but you are working on the other side now fill this all in and then pack it down put some sand in there after i pack it down hopefully it don't rain before uh i get this finished off up there yeah they they say we're calling for rain later on but if we can get some of it filled in so you worked the whole day the other day and then you went off to jim's place and did some work with him did we you're clearing out a house we uh yeah we're cleaning well the garage the garage for now i guess yeah yeah i was just there too i bought some antiques well right on yeah so i have to did you find that uh what the heck um from that show where he goes hunted and old treasures and stuff oh he's got that prospector's hat oh no it was in the garage no i didn't see that there i i told jimmy he should show you that because you'd probably be interested oh no i bought some other neat stuff some cloth and things like that so i was off doing my usual work um but yeah i'm i'm looking forward to seeing all this and so the folks at home know this whole side all the way down has to get filled to a certain level and then hans will come around with where is it now the packer there right there it's a nice uh small little one too and what this does it vibrates and shakes and it packs everything down nice and firm um our plans called for it to be about 90 98 packed and i think we'll be getting very close to that uh if not exactly that so handy little device and you don't have the uh you don't have zenobia with you the boss is doing a bunch of running around today uh which is also important because we don't get a whole bunch of chance to really do the banking and all that stuff yeah that's good to get that done so well you're working today okay well while you're doing this i'm gonna load some of the uh treasures i bought from the back of my vehicle into the shop i do need to find some time here to find space in the store i uh you know i go and i clear out hoarder houses and things like that and then if i'm not careful my store will turn into one itself um the problem is right now the store is pretty full you know right there hans okay you look like he was having a little trouble there well i'm gonna load some stuff into the store and try and find some space for it i ran out to pick up a few things one this is an old clock case has been turned into a shelf which is kind of funny because i did the same thing right there that's an old schoolhouse clock still have the face for it but i took it out so i could use this shelving for watches so i know these actually make nice little wall hanging display cases that have used for that there's an ansonia wall clock i don't know if it works yet we'll try that out later some violins newer student size style violins a whole bunch of antique phones bakelite got a whole pile of them in here really neat sort of designs and people do buy old phones still i also picked up this leaded tiffany style lamp you can see it's got the green stained glass in the ornate leading this looks to be from around 1900 to 14 the art nouveau kind of style but what's almost more impressive it has the original bulb in there i mean that's a 100 year old light bulb still in this thing so this probably has not been used a whole lot in its life i was just cleaning a little bit and i will put it back together and we'll have a nice little lamp we'll all be darned came back out and hans got everything done he put little window wells in to protect where some of our lower features were on the building but everything's all in and nice and compacted and just really a nice clean working space for everybody so that means that tomorrow the guys should show up and i think framing is going to begin so everything's been happening just at the right time it's all cleaned up it's all ready to go next step bring on the walls but thanks for watching very much today guys we'll see you all soon and stay tuned to watch this building go up after such a long wait it is happening bye for now guys

Channel: Curiosity Incorporated

Views: 53,764

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Id: ETc7-6iq3cw

Length: 15min 23sec (923 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 08 2021