We've made a lot of progress in the last week or so. A week ago Thursday, the weather was finally cooperating so we had the mini-excavator dropped off so the real digging could begin. The two trees were cut down earlier in the week, and the tree people left the stumps kinda tall so the excavator could use the leverage to pull them over, all easy-like. Peter started digging around noon on Thursday, but the fir tree stump near the southeast corner of the yard must not have heard that it was supposed to come out easy (like Sunday morning). Consequently, after four hours of clawing and hacking with the excavator, and cutting roots with the Sawzall, Peter finally had the fir stump out of the ground. Here's a photo with the stump in the foreground, and the "heavy" machinery in the background:

After that the trenches could actually be started. It may seem like overkill to have an excavator for this small of a job, but for a total rental fee of around 300 bucks, it was definitely worth it. If we were to dig all of this by hand, it probably would have taken the better part of a week...

The following is a video of the digging in action. My commentary may be a bit overboard (one too many "giant" references) but given the effort that was exerted to remove that stump, the hyperbole came naturally:

With all the digging out of the way, we set to work building the forms. It's kinda tough to build something nice and square when the existing house is... well, slightly crooked. Considering the difficult baseline, I think we made the best of it. We went a bit deeper and a bit wider for the footings than the engineering called for, but one ounce of prevention is worth two lbs in the hand, as they say.

Anyway, this past Saturday the 16th was the big pour day. Just before the truck showed up, we started wetting down the forms and trenches. Here's Renée on hose duty, also showing the fully braced forms, all ready for mud:

The following is a little video of the concrete pour in action. It may look like we're just sorta watching it flow out, but believe me, there was a lot of shoveling going on. It was a fairly busy 45 minutes there, not to mention the amount of time spent on the concrete finish work after the pour was done. We were lucky that the truck could be backed up this close, as we didn't need to have a separate pumper truck on hand as well.

Which brings us to today: Renée and I stripped the forms and backfilled the foundation, which took us much of the day. We should finally be out of the dirt now, and the fun stuff should begin. Here's a photo of the completed foundation (note that we left one stump in place... it will probably get cut down at some point, but didn't seem necessary right now, given amount of work it would require):

And another view of the foundation... it doesn't seem like much now, but once the second story goes on, the immense grandeur of our home will be readily apparent:

And that's pretty much it for now. Peter will start the framing tomorrow or maybe Tuesday, and in a week or so we'll be done. Thanks for reading.

Brief recap of the last couple weeks:
After two frustrating weeks of waiting for the Fire Dept. signoff (I was originally told all we needed to do was bring in the paperwork and pay our fees), they eventually signed off on Wednesday the 29th, and I got the building permit soon after. The next day, we successfully passed the pre-grade inspection, just in time for the trees to get cut down Friday morning... which would be just in time for the rented excavator to be dropped off at noon on Friday. We were finally on our way!

But then... we had our first significant setback due to weather. May 1st finally rolls around, and of course, the rain rolls in at the same time. The forecast was calling for rain for most of the weekend. So, we had to cancel the mini excavator rental, and the tree guys (Bushwhacker's) decided they'd rather not do their thing either (with good reason).

On Saturday, it ended up being relatively dry, so Renée and I decided to do a little manual digging to expose the sewer lateral. We knew we'd have to do some of that by hand regardless, since it was probably a little too much to risk digging that close to the sewer line with the excavator. Here's a photo of me digging, with Wheeler patroling the perimeter:

Wheezy didn't know we had only sorta started, so he was all excited about the activity:
We also pulled the eastern side-entry deck off the house, since there was really no reason to leave it there. In the whole scheme of things, we didn't get a lot done, but it was nice to actually do something.

On to the present: since the rain let up for most of today, Bushwhacker's was able to drop the trees, and now it feels like we've officially started. With the fir tree gone, the house sure looks exposed... and very small:
I gotta admit, I was a little bit sad to see the trees gone... but unfortunately, we didn't have much choice. We could only really expand the house forward and upward. At least we were able to keep the pine in the center. It's much more substantial, plus our power lines are attached to it. It was a good excuse to keep it, since the Fire Dept. would have preferred to see it removed.

So that's that. The excavator is now scheduled to be dropped off this Thursday, and Peter will hopefully be able to have the footprint expansion hogged out and ready to start building forms by the time we get home from work. Then Friday it'll be time to get the foundation formed up... and we'll really be on our way.

Site prep

Andy and I are headed out of town this weekend, and we need to get our permits ASAP to begin dirt work on May 1, so we had to do a little site prep over the weekend to make the inspectors happy. Here's the before and after photos, including our new trailer and Peter's trailer, which we're borrowing.

Andy says some of the stuff the county requires us to do is questionable as far as how effective it is, but since Andy works for the county, it doesn't hurt to be extra careful.

House pre-BMPs

Andy "protecting" the tree in front of our house

Vegetation protection fence on the east side of our lot, protecting our aspens and willow

Vegetation protection fence on the west side of the house