My dad came over on Thursday night to make sure everything was ready to go. We worked until about 10:15 pm. Then at 6:30a on Friday, Larry Brown showed up and our extreme weekend began. Larry had the right equipment, skill and experience. He flew threw our footings. Before the dig Southwest West Southeast The excavator Forming it up Greg Kidman came over and showed us how to work. Pop and I would still be struggling with the east side after a whole day, and we would probably have done it wrong.

We are making ready for the external footings to be dug in a couple of weeks. One of the tasks was to remove the back porch. The porch was made of poured concrete, so we couldn’t have it in the way of the footings.
We had built a temporary set of stairs from wood so that we could still use the back door. Both my dad and I estimated that it would be a fairly simple, relatively quick task to break up the concrete and to install the temporary porch. At most, we thought, we would need to go to the rental yard and get a full sized jack hammer.
We started to work on the porch with the Makita Rotohammer, but went to the lumber yard and quickly got the Bosch Brute demo hammer. We even told the rental clerk that we would probably have it back in less than 2 hours.

Our timeline was way off. We eventually got the cement porch out and the wood porch in, but it was much bigger than a 1 hour project.

3
hours into our 1 hour project The
rubble from the porch filled the entire bed of the truck The
temporary porch and happy smiles

After VS Live, we had a single work day on Saturday. We did a bunch of little projects that needed to be done (like finally remove
the story poles). Don and Camille were still at our house, so we had an extra pair
of hands. One of the projects we did was to add some siding to the new garage wall.
We used some of the left over siding from Uncle Ted’s addition, so we didn’t have
enough to complete the side that day. Before After

Camille and Don are generous with thier time in that they come down each year to stay with Toby for the week that I am at VS Live! They drive the motorhome down and park it behind our house. Well, we have been storing dirt and rubble behind the house and there is no room for the motorhome. So my dad brought his truck and we rented a Bobcat to move the dirt.

The guy at the rental yard, Suncoast Rental, showed us all the switches and all the steps to get it started and to drive it. When we got it home, my dad got in and repeated the steps. Nothing. Try again. Nothing. It would not start up. The ‘ready’ light was not coming on. We read the instructions and were mentally skipping the first step ‘attach safety belt’. Once we put on the seat belt, it started right up and no more difficulties.

After we filled up the truck (about 2/3’s of our pile of dirt) we drove around town looking for someone who wanted our good dirt. The construction site didn’t want it, nor did the retail nursery close by. We decided to drive around the nurseries in the foothills and show people our dirt. We pulled into one nursery, Hollandia, and I knew this place wouldn’t take the dirt. They are hydroponic growers of Live
Gourmet Lettuce. But they were very helpful, made a few phone calls and hooked
us up with Foothill Nursery. They sell plants in pots, and so have a continuous need
for dirt. We drove over there and our dirt was better than any they had. They were
very pleased to take our dirt. Scoop the dirt It
sure beats using a shovel

On Saturday, 6 May 2006, we had 9 yards of cement delivered to the house. We had a bunch of people over to help get the cement under the house. Unfortunately, the cement was about 2 hours late, and some of the people couldn’t stay. When Toby called to inquire about the status of the cement the owner of the company was pretty grumpy. She told him that it would be nice if he could let the customer know they were going to be late, and he told her not to tell him how to run his business and hung up on her. Not a good start. She called back and talked to the owner’s son and he was much more polite. The cement making machine had broken down and everyone was delayed. But the cement finally arrived and we got it all under the house. With a little help from our friends.

Jesse
Wasson, Me, Granpa Seal Jeff
Weinbender, Granpa Seal, Kevin Callaway, Marc Wasson Mark
Mazzetti, Marc Wasson, Mike Allen, Jeff Weinbender, Jon Otsuki We
put the left over cement on the side of the house and had enough for a walkway It’s
very dirty under the house