The big hole

We got our building permit on the 18th, so we were hoping to have everything ready to start the next week. There were delays on our construction loan (ok it might not be quite all the way done even yet) and delays on the excavator's schedule, one of their machines broke so we had to wait for the other one, but finally it looks like we have a hole!

They delivered tractors on Tuesday

and on Wednesday I came home to a big hole. They say foundation on Friday.

Demoltion complete?

We are patiently waiting for the city to grant us a building permit before we start excavation. Should be any day now. The demolition contractors seem to think they are done. What is it about contractors in particular but men in general that they think that the job is done when in reality it is just mostly done.

Just a couple more loads guys.

bye bye breezeway

The demolition begins

We are staying in our current house while the new house is being built. We have a garage and a guest house behind our house that we will demolish 1st, build the new house there and when it is done we will knock down our existing home and build a new garage. That is the plan anyway, we will see how it turns out.

We got our demolition permit as of Monday, it was suprisingly easy. An asbestos test and 2 goverment agencies had to sign off and there it was. The 1st delay of what I am sure will be many was that we had to wait for the gas company to come and take the meter off and kill the line. That happened yesterday so as of today we were good to go!

Before

Halfway done

One down

One to go

The breezeway still stands

Total destruction!

Hope they come back to clean up tomorrow.

It all began with the breezeway to nowhere...

The city we live in has a funny rule that you can only build as far back on your lot as the average of the 3 houses next to you. Because we have an existing home on the lot we could count ours in the calculation, however detatched structures don't count. So in order to build as far back on our very long (311 feet) lot as we wanted to (151 feet, only halfway back, not unreasonable right?), we attached the house to our garage.

So here are pictures of the breezeway construction.

View from the house

The finished product

The beginning of the breezeway

This is the really big tree stump and the guy that took it out for us.