Can you dig it, part 2

June 27 -- whoa there is one big giant hole in what used to be my backyard.

This shot gives a great view of the scary BRICK foundation that my 110-year-old house sits on. This is the door to the basement and the fence in the upper left-hand corner gives a sense of how far down into the ground the brick foundation goes.

Here is another shot that shows the basement relative to the back of the house and how big this hole that used to be my back yard is.  Today a new sewer line was established to accommodate the additional bathrooms for this project.

These two shots provide a bit more perspective to show where the new staircase to the basement will be located. 

 


And all of this was done with the help of these Bobcats....

I would be a big fat liar if I said that the site of this giant hole did not freak me out.  After sending an e-mail to both the contractor and architect with the subject line "a little freaked out" the architect sent an e-mail to remind and reassure me that the hole is bigger than where the actual footprint of the addition will be ...whew.  

I will now return to uber zen mode!

Most of the excavation and sewer line work should be done by tomorrow.  

Can you dig it?  Part 1

June 24 -- I came home to find the back fence gone, but that was about it.  Then I talked to the contractor by phone who explained that the excavation equipment might arrive before dark or first thing tomorrow morning.

Before I knew it, I heard a pretty loud noise and this is what I saw coming through the side yard (by the south side of the house),

then approaching the back of the house, and

squeezing in between the house and the garage to  

finally settle in for the backyard.

The backhoe operator, who also spoke to me in perfect French (he was showing off just a bit), was friendly and very delightful.  Before I knew it he was off to bring back another piece of equipment.

Here is the Bobcat that will scoop up the dirt and will take it to a dump truck to haul away.  As you can see in the photo above (which I took from the upstairs bedroom to get a bird's eye view), there are power and phone lines in a tangled web that will need to be raised so that the boom on the backhoe doesn't hit these lines when the digging starts bright and early tomorrow morning.