Excavation

Anyone who's walked by knows things have transformed since these pics, though it really was only a few days ago we were at this stage.

I'll post a bunch of pictures to give you a sense of the drama: a small space with tons (literally) of excess soil to be removed.

The digger is delivered to much fanfare!

Woo-hoo. (Our house is second from the end.)

What a scene!

Jake. Excavator extraordinaire! Highly recommended. Polite, friendly, efficient, honest, skilled, resourceful, energetic. 

Tons of soil (about 20?) left piled in the back by previous owners from their excavating for extension and drainage (also two huge stumps, a third was removed by Andrew!).

Mountains of soil.

All gone! Plus a rectangle dug deeper for patio base.

The basement space under the porch was also full of soil! (?!) Wall had to come down and soil dug out from there too. Aigh.

We're going to put in a concrete floor and use the space for bike storage.

We decided we might as well have the front yard scraped off while we were at it.

Treasures were unearthed. (No gold or anything... just some prehistoric plastic toys.)

Many large rocks too!

Most of which we saved for a rock wall in the front.

Three bins full of soil!!

                            

Nothing like a digger and a pile of dirt to bring out the neighbourhood kids.

Business as usual. Off to gymnastics camp.

To get the playhouse out of the way, resourceful Jake tied a strap around it and picked it up with his digger.

I include a video of that for your viewing pleasure.

The girls watching from the now-inaccessible back door.

Random picture. Beautiful selfie. 

(btw, sorry for the quality of the photos. My camera's broken and I've been using my phone, which takes terrible pictures.)