The Hole

So what do ya do when you've moved to tornado land? Well you throw a bunch of money in a hole in the groud of course!!

Our new home did not come with a "storm shelter" but we've heard many people talk of them. It seems 50/50 around here, some swear by them and wouldn't be without them, some think they are silly as "I've lived here my whole life without one..." Josh and I spent alot of time deliberating over this and finally decided that after our "luck" in Texas with Ike, we'd probably feel better having one over not, especially with Josh gone so much and me home alone with the monkeys. And tornado season is coming sooner than we'd prefer...

So we shopped around and learned alot. There are many kinds of storm shelters, sizes, designs and a wide range of prices. You can have the older fashioned ones that are sort of a hill with an angled door (like you see in the classic movies), you can have them dug into the floor of your garage, you can have a steel box just set above ground in your garage, you can get the kind that is underground but about 3-4 foot tall or you can get the "patio top" style. We didn't want a hill in the backyard, we didn't want to dig into the garage and void our home's warranty for breaching the foundation or have issues with parking our car or putting our things in the garage, we didn't want to feel too clausterphobic in a 3ft ceiling and we were planning on putting a patio in right off the back door anyway...so we went with the patio top style and chose a very experienced company to build it.

So here's what happened this week in our backyard...

Starting to dig

The hole is done
The tractors and such were a great show for Carter and Reese
Starting to put the wall forms in
The form that the concrete will be poured around is done
Concrete is in for the floor and walls, getting ready to pour the roof
All the concrete is done, now it needs to dry
Standing up at ground level, looking down the stairs into our hole
A view from inside our hole...it's 7x10 ft inside with a 6-1/2 ft ceiling...Josh's wine collection will find a new home under the stairs
The finished product...our new patio on top of our hole

It was so interesting to watch this come together, especially the part where they popped the form apart and slid the pieces up the door hole. Where there was nothing 24 hours before, there were walls, a floor, and a ceiling of a finished "room."

After the concrete has cured/dried properly, we'll move the bbq out and hide a vent, and possibly put a swing over the door to camouflage that a bit too. Now we have the task of putting together some emergency supplies...water, food, diapers, blankets...for the occasion we might acutally use this thing. Josh says we can put a mattress down there and it's our new guest room *wink*...just need to paint a window on the wall, put up some curtains and it should look like home lol!