A BIG hole...

We'll let the photos speak for themselves for the most. Today was a dig...er big day.

Freddie, good guy that he is, showed up on Saturday morning to dig a big hole for our foundation.

He said that the soil was great -- very gravely, good for drainage. Hopefully that means that we'll have a very dry basement.

It took him about 8 hours to get this hole, plus a couple others dug. In the process, he also pulled out a bunch of trees that were too close to the house.

To take this picture we climbed on top of the 20 foot high pile of dirt next to the 10' foundation hole.

And this is obviously taken inside the foundation hole...

It will be interesting to see what Mark decides to do about the original foundation. As the dirt was being moved away from it, it became clear that the rocks that are the foundation are not actually bonded together with mortar (except for on the inside of the foundation). Freddie left a decent amount of dirt next to the foundation so that it wouldn't collapse.

Once Mark figures out how to support the house, if the back foundation wall collapses, Freddie will be back to finish digging the hole. In the meantime, we will have the place fumigated for termites and other pests that will want to eat our house. In the next blog, you'll see photos of the basement, where Leigh and I spent the day shoveling coal.

Measuring progress in inches, not feet...

For the last couple, maybe three weeks, Rocky has been working on the house by himself. While he's been doing a good job, having only one person working has meant that the pace has been very slow. Over the last week, Rocky has wrapped most of the house with Easy Guard, which is a generic brand version of Tyvek. Before doing this he had been replacing sheathing that was rotted.Other work that could have been in progress, like re-framing the interior, repairing the roof, installing the new windows, taking down the chimney and rebuilding it, taking up the guest bedroom floors - as not been happening because apparently it's been a pretty busy time for the trades and our contractor can't seem to find anyone to do the work.

You're looking at the back of the house, where with any luck and many fingers crossed, a big hole will appear at the end of this week. We'll see....

Things have been moving quickly!

We haven't had time to write a blog recently because the project has been movng so quickly!

You can see that we left the timbers exposed whereever we could...

Just kidding -- this isn't our house...

A day in the garden.

As you can see, the last few warm days have really brought out the green at the 1790 House. Today was a pretty big day for us. We finalized our kitchen design and ordered cabinets. This was a pretty big deal, since we've spent the equivalent of a couple of days time working with a great kitchen designer at the Home Depot in Salem. After we finished that we headed out to the house to do some transplanting. When we start digging we're going to lose some amazing lilacs and some other trees. In the photo above the small (maybe 15 year old) Maple to the right will have to go because that is where the water line enters the building. The Rhododendron right behind Riley in the photo will have to be moved to another spot when we scrape down the little hill and re-grade the front lawn.

We have to re-grade to get the soil away from the sills (one of the access points for termites!) So we're taking the soil around the house down one foot.

In the above photo you are looking at the left side of the house where the new main entrance will eventually be. As I was taking the photo I was actually standing where the new septic system will be installed. Because of this the large group of bushes and trees on the left side of the photo will have to be moved or re-moved. It appears to be white lilac, sumac and a cherry tree -- along with a bunch of small maples. Today we moved 15 lilacs to the back fence (see below) in hopes that thew will grow and provide a screen.

Above is another photo of the trees that will have to be removed.

Here you can see an old dog house and the transplanted lilacs. Cross your fingers. We read that lilacs are supposed to be the easiest plants to transplant. We'll see! Tomorrow is more transplanting in preparation for the foundation digging (hopefully this week.)

A Walk through Newburyport

The other day was so beautiful that Leigh and I spent a few hours walking through downtown Newburyport with Riley. On our walk we encountered several inspirational houses. Here are some photos.

One day we hope that we'll have photos of our house that look like this! All kidding aside, we're hopeful that we'll have two key signatures by Monday morning that will allow us to get our building permit and start digging a foundation for the new part of the house.

In preparation for this, we were out at the house today, transplanting lilac trees. Unfortunately we are going to lose a bunch of very old lilacs to the construction. No way to save them but we'll be working hard to move as many of them as possible in the next couple of days.