Concrete Floors

This is what the project looks like after Bagyan and his work crew made the posts and the two concrete floors.  When we made the concrete floor above, we had to call in some more workers and many of my relatives came to help us out. There were 15 men who worked in pouring the second concrete floor above and they did it in one day! I was really amazed, they poured the concrete manually and they worked very fast. These relatives gave their help in labor for free because that is the culture in my mother's hometown. When  somebody puts up a house, the relatives tries to help out and pitch in with the work for a day or two of free labor. This is especially true when it comes to pouring concrete floors which is hard work. You only provide them for the food but they will not accept a fee unless they worked for more than 3 days. I would have hired some of them earlier but they all had prior work assignments. In fact, some of them had to take a leave of one day from their work just to come and help us out. So I am grateful and proud of my relatives for helping us out and for the old culture that they try to keep. May God Bless them all.

 I designed the house to follow the contour of the land so as to minimize excavating the earth. The lot is on a sloping land. Whatever soil that came out when they dug up the holes for the posts was thrown away to the vacant lot at the back of my neighbor's place after obtaining the permission of the caretaker of the lot who happens to be the Barangay Captain. Some neighbors actually made use of the soil that we threw into the vacant lot. They asked permission from the Barangay Captain to allow them to make use of the soil for a vegetable garden. The vacant lot is actually a very big titled property and the owners were going to make it into a subdivision at one time but it never materialized for some reason.