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!

If a tree falls in the woods....

Well, more like when trees fall in the city. Today was the day for the huge ugly locust trees to come down. These are NOT small trees. E, my Dad's handyman, was in a 50ft bucket skid, and was barely making it 1/3 to 1/2 of the way up the tree. Yeah. BIG trees. We were able to down most of them without incident. Notice I said "most". Yeah, one fell in a different path than it should and landed on the trailer next door. Luckily, my Dad owns that property, so it's not that big of a deal. Ooops.

 The 50 foot boom skid.

 The first tree going down!

 This is why they have to come down. See the light part, that's healthy tree. The dark part that's MOST of the middle, that's all rotten.

 The second tree coming down! (Yes, I took pics of all the trees coming down. No, I won't bore you with it.)

 The aftermath of the second tree down.

 Dad hauling the logs from the trees with his tractor. Like I said, these a HUGE trees.

 Oops.

 Not exactly what we had planned.

 But, it is what it is. Good thing Dad owns the property though.

See, BIG trees. 50 foot boom full extended.

And here is a Before/After. It's not a very good one, but you can definitely see that we opened up the view.