Electric, phone, internet

Oh. That's what the hole is for.

I won't be off the grid.

Footings (or footing?)

Basement view

Basement walls

I go away for a few days and look what happens!

Looking down stair from 2nd floor

Stair from 1st floor hall

One of Demetri's and Jason's great stairs. How about that orange wall?

Real Explosives!

After the blast

Boom!! It really was like in the movies. Except for the burning string part. Placed the dynamite, covered with lots of soil, rolled out the wire, sounded the warning signal and hit the button! Oh -- and moved all the people, dogs and equipment far away. Too far to get a good picture. And even so, a rock fell within about 20' of where we were standing. All this because the slow-acting explosive (isn't that an oxymoron?) was so slow it never happened.

So that's it for the ledge in the way. Next step -- footings and foundation and it looks like the weather is going to cooperate. Pretty warm (relatively speaking) and not too wet. Yeah -- it's really started.

My new room.

The west end of the house was never intended to have a basement. But in moving the house around to avoid and/or accommodate ledgerock, it ended up further west sticking out over the slope high in the air. Options were tons of fill and that 'house on top of a septic mound look' or extend the basement below. Second option yields a great room with full length windows and views. So might as well plan now for future plumbing -- bathroom for guest room #2 and room with shelving and a big ole slop sink.

Never know -- someone could be making cheese. Or painting.

How do they do it? I mean the bloggers. It has been nearly a month since my last post. For awhile nothing much was happening, but then last week... they dug the hole!

Of course there's ledge all over the place, but nobody knows where -- until they did the hole. So time to stop speculating came and of course the rock was in all the wrong places. Like under the stair and where the small basement was going to be. So we started the juggling. Move the house 5' this way, 5' that way, 10' up, rotate it 10 degrees, and use some slow acting explosives for that rock that just can't be avoided. And in the end -- voila! The house has a full basement with a big beautiful walk-out room where there was going to be a slab. Yup. The house got bigger. I think a portion of the future barn is now under the house. But everyone who thought I was crazy not to want a basement is now really happy. And so am I.