Building a Strong Foundation...

The bar was set pretty high with the existing foundation of the house in darn good shape after 130 years! Ben and his team are doing their best to ensure this one lasts just as well.

Pleasantly surprised by the nice topsoil!

After Popp Excavating completed the earthwork in just one day, we thought it would be smooth sailing ahead... and then it rained. And rained. And rained.

Turns out changing a tractor tire isn't easy.

It seemed that Monday - Friday were torrential downpours, but we did get a few nice days in between.

Elsie is learning to be a great mechanic & farm hand!

We took those sunny day opportunities to get back up to Northport to replace the tire on Ben's tractor and begin the much needed process of pulling out all the Autumn Olive on the property! We've made quite a dent, but still much, much more to be done!

Operation invasive species removal underway!

Another pleasant surprise: It turns out we have a sliver of a bay view
from the top of the hill behind the house!

 So, it was just last week that the guys were able to hand dig the footings for the new construction.  It was surprisingly hard digging for this area.  Instead of the "sugar sand" we expected, it was mostly clay, gravel, and heavy loam.  While not the easiest material to work with, we can sleep easy knowing that footings won't be moving any.  The building inspector was happy with the work and gave us approval to pour concrete. Dan Largent, our mason , and his crew quickly installed the re-bar and leveled the wet concrete.

We lucked out with more great weather today (yay!) and the team got to work on the block walls for the crawl space and garage. It's amazing to see the progress!

Hopefully, it really will be smoother sailing from here on out... the weather forecast looks good, for now!