Day 10 - Preparing to start forms for the footings

I thought they were done excavating Monday. But our 1 man excavation team named Cio had to finish up by hand digging the outline for the footings. The mini excavator cant reach the top of the hole, and there is no where to pile dirt anymore. The framing crew brought in all the supplies for the footings today, looks like they will start building forms tomorrow. Since the basement is right next to the house, its an interesting footing design... the only a few inches wide on the outside but over 2' wide on the inside. Here is Lisa wanting to come out of the hole for dinner time.

Day 8 - Excavation Done

Excavation finally completed today! Now they are digging out dirt for the for the footings.

News just reported that we had the driest 2 month March+April in Sacramento history. In this situation it is very good news.

Temporary Wall

Framed up a temporary wall across living room Sunday. For a time during construction the current sliding glass door at the back of the living room will be gone, so this will be our temporary back door.

Found a nice 8ft door at Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $10. Lisa says that the OSB is smelling up the house. This area should be a cozy living room, kitchen, den, dining area for the next few months. Just like college living again!

Day 5; We hit rock bottom!

Day 5: I drove up to the house today and the neighborhood kids decided to have a mud party in the street! Check it out.

The basement is dug! No rocks in any of this soil!

Day 4 - Still Digging!

The digging continues. Looks like we will have a huge basement! They are probably little over half way and now part of the basement is all the way dug out. No pics today....

Day 3 - Keep digging towards the core of the earth

mini-backhoe arrived today, since the bobcat alone wasn't destroying our driveway at a sufficient rate. They are down to 8ft at the deep end.

Existing house is now sitting on the edge of precipice, just waiting for some Cali seismic event to nudge it into the hole.

Watch that first step out of the kitchen door!

Day 2 - Arrival of...

The porta potty showed up today. Love it.



This morning the stucco from the back of the house was demo''d via the hammer! This morning I quickly moved the nice glasses out of the kitchen cupboards to avoid breakage. The pounding was so hard that the tile in the kitchen backsplash started to fall off. Then I left, so who knows what happened after that....



The digging started today on the basement, we are about 4-5 feet down. Low and behold it also started raining tonight. Hopefully the hole does not fill in with water!



The driveway is getting pretty trashed from the bobcat so that may need replacing now...

Day 1 - Construction (Destruction)

Hey all. the past few months have been filled with moving all our SH&%T out of the house. W e packed up and put everything in storage. At the same time John's mom and Tom were also in the process of moving so they put all their stuff in storage too!



The plans were done in August/Sept sometime but we could not start until the rains were over. Well here we go!



Bye bye porches started Monday. That was so weird. Attached are the pics. More to follow....



LL and John

Day 0

The pictures before any of this happens.... Jeff and Deanna are visiting before any of this happens, say good bye to this all...

It has been about a year or more of planning for this project. We are finally ready!

It is very exciting!!