On Location

After months of behind the scenes research and paperwork, it was finally time to break ground on this project! We kept saying we'd bought a LOT, but in actuality, there was still a house on it and that house needed to come down! Here's the house as it looked when we closed at the end of November.

Notre Dame must have felt we were a little slow getting the ball rolling, so they sent their wrecking ball over to move things along! Actually, what happened was their demo crew was supposed to tear down the house just south of ours, 912 not 918, and got a little confused and tore off the enclosed front porch of our house! Seems like the FIRST rule of demolition would be "Be sure you have the correct house!" They boarded up the front and the little house waited a couple weeks for the final act.

They certainly can take it down a whole lot faster than they can put it back up! It took two days and I think that is only because the same guy worked both the backhoe and the dump truck and had to make multiple trips to empty out the debris.

The demolition took place on Monday and Tuesday, March 17 & 18. On Thursday, they staked the house and on Friday the backhoe came back to dig the BIG HOLE for our house. (You'll note that the first picture and the last picture in this post both show snow on the ground -- that's pretty much how it looked all winter!!)

It's amazing how little perspective you have when trying to 'size up' the hole. Is it big enough? Deep enough? In the end you tell yourself, "This is why we hired trained construction professionals!" (And then you head to the Grotto to say a little prayer....)