One Sixty: The Escavation Culmination

The Escavation Culmination

I thought of something! Mike told me two nights ago, but I was too tired to remember right away. Ur, I need a latte - a lotta latte. Anyhoo - there is a good chance that we will have an escavator and a dump truck at our house this weekend to do some leveling next to the garage. In fact, we could get all the leveling we need done in one weekend with this equipment.

Normally, you'd have to shell out the big money for a weekend rental of big equipment - but Mike has a friend or two who have access to it. And, one said he'd come dig all weekend if Mike would just fix his jet ski. No problem! We'll see if we can borrow the dump truck from another friend of ours. The escavator can dig a lot of dirt, but it doesn't move very quickly. With the dump truck, the dirt could be escavated into the truck and then dumped into our hole of a back yard. It's much more efficient to keep the escavator digging then to dig a little, drive it in back, dump it out, drive front, dig a little more, and so on and so forth.

Mike's so excited - it's something about big machines that just thrills him over and over again. Even I have to admit that I love watching them go. I'll probably just set up my lawn chair in a good location and indulge the kid in me all afternoon.

In case you've forgotten our hilly dillema - we have a weird hill next to our garage that's just got to go. So, we're going to slope the landscape along the same level as our gradually sloping driveway. We'll leave the tree line at the top of the old hill alone to provide privacy and hold up the cliff wall, which we may reinforce later with some kind of wall or stone or something pretty.

With the hill gone, we can park our boat next to the garage and regain that yard space with some grass and other nice plantings. I'd like to ditch two evergreens that border the driveway - they're not looking so hot anyway - and add some nice trees of some sort. I'm not the plantiest of people, but I have a general idea of what a nice yard looks like. And, like everything else, I'll learn as I go.

Blog Story

My now husband Mike and I purchased this quaint home back in spring of 2004 - our first home - and, being the handy folks we are, expected to have the entire thing renovated in about a year or so.

And here we still are... renovating away.

This house needed a complete overhaul. Its plaster walls were uninsulated, its attic floor covered in 2" of bat guano, its basement - dirt and snakes, its exterior - asbestos siding, and lead paint windows in every room. The electric had not been updated and light sockets hung bare from the ceiling. Plumbing featured cast iron radiators - and only one for the entire upstairs.

We began by gutting almost the entire house from top to bottom. (sans bathroom - we needed to pee) We rebuilt the entire upstairs, with a new floor (not new carpet or wood - the once unstable framing underneath) and turned 3 small rooms into two. We reinvented the downstairs by turning a closet into a hallway and eliminating interior exterior windows and doors from old half-assed additions.

New insulation, windows, electrical wiring (including phone and CAT-5 internet), plumbing and baseboards, and drywall were all added.

We purchased kitchen cabinets from a yard sale. (None existed previously.) Our families helped us replace and purchase new appliances including the once also missing washer & dryer.

Then we had the entire house lifted - straight into the air - dug out the dirt, and had a real basement foundation poured. We updated our oil tank and burner and created heating zones.

Outside, we took down trees and planted grass. We dug out an awkward hill to create a 2nd part to the driveway and used the rocks our house once sat on as a retaining wall. We electrified and repainted the garage.

And of course, we spent many an hour on finish work like paint, trim, closet doors, lighting fixtures, hardwood floors, curtain rods, dimmer switches, and many other things everyone else takes for granted. We are still working to complete all this final finishing, but happy to report that we are FINALLY nearing completion of all little things in all rooms!

In 2008 we began overhauling the exterior by creating a new french door entryway and building a farmer's porch and garage addition. We replaced our roof and then stripped off our siding and replaced with new clapboards. We then planted two new flowering trees and a maple in the front yard - our first major landscape purchases. I'm happy to report that here in 2011, the porch is nearing completion and the back yard is on the road to recovery with some new loam and grass. More plantings soon to come!

In 2012 we plan to attack the last MAJOR (emphasis on major) job in the house - the dreaded BATHROOM! We plan to first add a second bathroom in the basement. Then, demolish our current bathroom and rebuild it, adding a second bathroom on top for the upstairs.

And that pretty much brings you up to date. The battle continues day to day as we try and complete everything.