The Wine Cave
How we spent our Summer of 2006
An unused area of the back yard....
It was this point that Laura came back from the grocery store to find I was serious
Started with what else....Baby Steps
Didn't think I did this by myself, did you?
Pretty cool geology here.....locating rock bolts for stabilizing portal cut
The girls are pretty freaked out at this point
Portal colums Formed and Poured
Took a handful of buddies to lift this form up
Rebar connection to 48-inch long rock bolts
Home Depot is getting curious at this point
OK then, Dig Dig Dig
Poured the reinforced liner three feet at a time
The picture doesn't convey the heat of Summer
17 feet in...note the pour lines..we bought a manual grout pump for the ceiling
A little masonry....the lawn is not happy with the wheelbarrow!
I learn nearly everything useful from the internet, including how to lay cut blocks
My first decent block job...something like 24 total hours
Poured the floor and porch entirely with my little mixer!
Spent more time cutting the fancy beam ends than installing the beams.
Put this up in a half day
Picked up an odd lot of leftover hand-made tile at the roofing yard
I could read the Mexican newspaper on the back side
Bent a mahogany 1 x 10 for a jamb and started stucco (it hides all my mistakes)
Got the lamps wired up
Was scared this night as I left the cave by a bat just outside, and just a foot in front of me
Never saw one before, or since, but a trip since it was a cave project!
I've done this stone veneer a couple of times....very easy
Outside completed with a 3-ply mahogany door... another 2 week project
Added a heat pump since the September temperature was 65 degrees
A mechanical engineer figured only 700 BTU/hr to keep this at
60 degrees in the Summer
A buddy dropped off some spare barrel racks
Then another two weeks on a redwood bottle rack, capacity 700+ bottles
Now if I could just grow some decent grapes.....
Last Updated: March 26, 2007