Bobcat

Last weekend we rented a bobcat to clear away the big dirt piles near the house. Although Adam was on it for a little while that morning, a friend came over later and took care of the rest for us. We are so grateful to our friend Joe who took the time to do that for us. He is in the concrete biz and has to level many a ground so he was fast and efficient. If you are in the area and need a good concrete guy, we have just the guy for you!Greta watching her daddy on the "digger".

As you face the house, this is the right of the house where one large dirt pile stood.

This is on the left side of the house where another once stood. All gone now!

One other transformation was ripping up the planter in the backyard. You can see in previous posts a big planter with overgrown shrubs and bushes. Now we have room to run and play and build a playground instead. All of the dirt was just put at the back of the property to use when we need it.

Footers

The footers are dug and in a matter of 24 hours, we should have a propped up, pier laden, sturdy house!

This weekend's TO DO LIST:

1. rip up carpet

2. take down cabinets in utility room

3. rent a bobcat to push the dirt behind the outbuilding. we decided to keep it.

I got dirt

You haven't heard from me in a while. I've struggled what to report on the house because unfortunately, there's not much to report. The crew has dug underneath the foundation and after killing two snakes that they found underneath (ugh!), the foundation has gone from this

to this...It's hard to see, but they really have done a lot of digging. Those concrete piers are just temporary until they can mix some actual concrete up, but that's our main problem. We've had thunderstorms roll through daily and it's been too wet to do anything. Not to mention our contractor has been on a cruise and Adam and I had our own family's vacation last week. Now, we leave again tomorrow for a friend's wedding, but are really prayerful and hopeful the foundation will be finished by next week. Pray that the rain will hold off and head down to Texas where they really need it!

In the mean time, we've got dirt. A lot of dirt. I posted on Craigslist free fill dirt and have gotten some responses, but my sister thinks we're crazy for giving it away. Now, it makes me wonder if we should keep it for some reason. We could do raised planters for a garden, but Adam thinks we should just till the ground. We could level the ground, but then we have to rent a bobcat for that. I was just trying to save us a couple hundred dollars from not having to rent, but maybe we could really use the dirt.

We were going to get our kids a playground set, but Greta seems to really like a dirt hill. Maybe we should keep it right where it is. :)

Any ideas or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

So far, so good!

We've had two groups of people over recently working at the house. The first group that has come and gone are the HVAC guys. That giant gray metal box was our old AC unit. This picture was taken back in March when we were just beginning to check the place out.

Where the paint bucket is is where the AC unit used to be before they unhooked it and hauled it away! Our HVAC guys say they can put our new one down those cement stairs and actually keep it underneath the house. We need to decide whether we want automatic valves or manual valves now...Automatic of course would be preferable, but we're on a budget here people and I'm still holding out for kitchen cabinets. If we go manual, it would be a seasonal thing for us to go in the crawlspace and manually fiddle with the valves until the interior temp was to our liking. Not bad, but annoying I'm sure.

These are the steps leading down to the crawlspace. The old unit was so huge it actually rested on top of the stairwell and hovered over your head as you walked down.

This is what you see when you get down there. Looking at these tunnels, I think that if the diggers didn't work out in the field of construction, they might have a lucrative career in prison. :) This is a crew hired by our contractor to dig out enough dirt for our contractor to assess where our foundation piers need to be replaced. From the inside, it is evident to see where the floor has at least one broken pier as the it dips in the hallway. We were going to dig out and then replace piers, but for the security of the house as it shifts from the dirt removal and the safety of the guys underneath, they are replacing them as they go.

You can see in some places where the dirt is so high that there is no room to assess what's going on below the house. This is OLD dirt and the guys say it is hard, hard work to dig it out.

Totally Diggin It

Today is our ground-breaking day, figuratively and literally. It is our first day of actual construction where our contractor we'll literally be getting down and dirty with a crew digging underneath the house. They plan to take bucket after bucket of dirt out from underneath the house to assess the foundation and get to all 4 corners of the house from below. The house's foundation sags in the middle and our assumption is that a couple piers are broken and need to be replaced. We bought the house with this big unknown, but are fairly confident in our contractor's confidence that this is the problem. Hopefully, and prayerfully we won't discover quicksand :).