....would there be a sound? You bet there would!

Last June (2012), I made a post entitled "If a tree falls in the woods..." This is the continuation to that post. Yes. It's taken us over 6 months to take down the remaining trees. These ones were by power lines so we had to hire this done.

These are the remaining locust trees that needed to come down in order for the electric company to hook the house's electric service up.

This is the tree service. 

Better view of the trees. These things are massive.

All gone!

The house looks so much different without any of the trees behind it anymore.

This is the mess we were left it. Some of these logs are 30+ feet long.

This is going to be fun cleaning up.

Demo is done!

Woo hoo! Demolition is completely done! The rest of the old floor deck was removed little by little by DH over the week. The wall separating the old basement with the new crawlspace has been removed. Even part of the dirt we removed has been pushed back down. Now, we start CONSTRUCTION! The next thing that will happen is the new floor deck going on. Then the walls will go up. So, the next three weeks are going to see a LOT of progress! I can't wait!

I know it's hard to see, but here is the foundation as it sits. The pink parts are the old basement walls, the grey is the new crawlspace. Now you can finally see just how much we added on.

Basement walls

Today DH and MD shored up the basement walls in preparation for rebar and concrete to be poured into them to help stabilize them. Then, they started tearing off the floor deck. The plan is to finish tearing off the floor deck on Friday. Block guy for the crawlspace foundation will be here sometime next week!

 See! Part of the floor deck has been taken off. DH is going to try to salvage the hardwood flooring to use in a different project later on.

 Yeah. The block was really really loose. Good thing this wall is going to be removed.

See how they braced the wall in preparation for the rebar and concrete! And yes, this is standing on the concrete pad, looking through the wall into the basement.

Excavation Day Two

Today's pictures aren't as impressive as yesterday's, however we did get a lot of work done. We put in the drainage pipe and excavated the whole new addition area. Oh, we also broke my Dad's dump truck. Tomorrow we'll be putting the framework in for the concrete slab of the crawlspace. The slab will be poured on Tuesday. The foundation will also be shored up on Tuesday.  So, Sunday and Monday will be rest days. Yay. Days of rest!

 MD and DH putting in the drainage pipe.

 DH standing in the hole that will be the crawlspace for the new addition.

 Here's what the 'house' looks like now. That's 8 feet of the basement wall you can see here.

 And here is the mound of dirt lining the property. Why? Remember how I said the dump truck broke? Yeah. That's why. We can't remove the dirt from the property because of the dump truck being broke.

This is no little pile of dirt either. LMS is 4'6" tall and it's as tall as she is. It extends the full length of the property too. Insane. 

Excavation Day 1

Yes, I said Day One. You'll see why later. Anyway, today started off amazing. I was truly astonished at how fast things went today. In fact, the pictures will do all the story.

 How the house looked when we began the day. It didn't stay like this for long.

 The excavator!

 There goes part of the rest of the house!

 Boom!

 And there goes the rest!

 Smash. No more house.

 DH working down in the trench next to the basement. It's deep. We have some foundation work we need to do, which is why we're digging around the foundation.

And this is why there is a Day One. The track came off the excavator. 15 mins AFTER the place closed for the day. Isn't that how it always goes? The plan now is to finish excavation tomorrow, after the people come and fix the track. Then, we're off and running on construction!

Preparations have begun

So, when we last left off with the house (a week ago), this is what it looked like:

A giant mess in desperate need of cleaning up. Well, DH and I cleaned up the random wood, etc that way laying around.  We also cleaned up the huge pile of stuff that was off to the left side of this picture. (You can't see it in this picture.)

Well, the other day, my Dad came in and cleaned up all the block and concrete bits. I don't have pictures of him doing it, as we weren't there that day. However, I -do- have pictures of the after-effects!

 As you can see, the block and random concrete bits are now gone. The only block remaining is the few you see acting as steps into the other half of the house.

The next step will be to excavate, pour the slab, and lay the block. That's supposed to happen sometime in the next week or so. My Dad has to make precise measurements, figure out what we need, rent the excavator, line up a masonry, etc. So, the next update will come once that process starts.

Almost....

We've almost completed demolition on the addition part of the house. The main part of the house will be staying for a while. After we clean up what's laying around, the next phase will be squaring off the foundation.   That will happen after precise measurements are taken, excavation is done, etc. So, after tomorrow's cleanup, the house will mostly likely sit for a little while. That's fine, because DH goes back to work on Thursday.

 My Dad digging out the concrete pad that was under the mudroom.

 This is how it looked this afternoon when we broke for extreme heat. 

 Hubby knocking the underlayment boards. 

 He threw one at me!

This is what it looks like tonight. As you can see, we have a fair bit of clean up to do.

See. This is the view of the pile of stuff we have to clean up. This was BEFORE we took all the floor joists/etc off.

Dumpster's full

Yep. We filled our huge dumpster that quickly. Hubby and his Dad once again went uber on the demo today. They took off the rest of the shingles and dropped the ceiling/insulation in the house. THAT was a mess! Miss Attitude and I knocked down the rest of the siding. Then, late this afternoon, my Dad showed up and used the backhoe/tractor to tear down the mudroom. Very very busy day.

 Hubby tear the remaining shingles off.

 Hubby and Hubby's Dad tearing off shingles.

 Hubby and his Dad getting ready to drop the ceilings.

 Look at all that insulation dust flying.

 Miss Attitude working hard.

 This is how Little Miss Sunshine spends the days. Yes, she sits in a lawn chair.

 Tearing down the mudroom.

 There it goes!

All down!

Getting there!

Today was another day of demo. Hubby's Dad came up to help. They managed to tear through the demo. I'm amazed at how much they got done. Walls are gone. Drywall is knocked down. The junk is cleaned up. Tomorrow, we take off the rest of the shingles, the siding, and finish demo'ing the interior.

 The walls between the hallway thing, kitchen, and bathroom are gone. The tub is now gone too.

 Looking from the hallway thing into the bedrooms

 Miss Attitude found some spray paint and started tagging things.

 That's hubby standing on some boards. No big deal, 'til you realize those boards are OVER the stairwell to the basement. Better hope they don't break!

 See! Caught in the act! We didn't really care though. The siding is coming down tomorrow.

 Our little handy helper.

Lunch time!