The excavators arrived this week and made short work of the foundation and started digging out the new footprint. The foundation was much easier than anticipated because it didn’t have any rebar in it. I’ll say it again, i am so happy we are replacing our foundation!
They are using 2 diggers. A small one that fits under the house and a larger one to load the dump trucks. We didn’t actually see any dump trucks but they shifted a lot of dirt and it is all gone. There was some concern that one of the stacks of blocks is a little bit off square which was freaking people out a bit, but Nickel Brothers came back and after saying it was nothing to worry about, knocked it back into place for everyone’s piece of mind.
Looking at the footprint they are digging out really makes us realize how much we are adding on. The hole comes a long way back! Yes, we did have the deck and shed there, but it extends far beyond where that used to end. It is exciting to see it start to take shape.
Unfortunately in the clean up after the lift and the prep for the diggers we just realized we lost the cast iron laundry sink we salvaged for the planting table we want to build for Sarah in the garden. It got moved from where we had it stashed and it went with the rest of the garbage. We did manage to salvage the huge beam and posts though. The beam is 32′ long old growth and the posts are each about 6 feet. We are hoping to get the beam ripped down to build a new dining room table! If it doesn’t vanish during construction.
Our contribution to the project now is limited to trying to keep the garden alive both inside the tree jails and out at Ward and Allison’s in Burnaby. We stop by regularly but they won’t let me drive the diggers.
This is the last weekend before i leave on my trip so i managed a 20 km hike and started on my final pack. I still am not happy with my food situation for lunch because i can’t find any dehydrated hummus which i really liked last year. Other than that i am doing ok. We still aren’t totally decided on whether we are going to Section E or bail and do Section D. At this point it is too late to get camp sites on any of the other sections and D just needs back country passes.
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