House to Home, Volume 10 - Looking Like a Cement Pond

It's a new week, it's a new month, and it's a whole new situation outside.  Good thing they can poor concrete walls in this kind of crappy weather.  Monday morning, November 2nd, view from the guest room window:

Exactly 24 hours later and the weather certainly hadn't gotten better:

They pulled all the forms off during the day and this is what I found when I got home a little after 4pm:

Woo hoo!  Super exciting.  There is a sleeve in the back wall for the water line (and maybe electrical?  I can't remember) and this one on the west side facing the road was a last minute addition.  It will connect to a drain in the garage floor.

Here's the guest room window view, then looking out the kitchen door:

When I back up a little, you can see I almost have a Juliet balcony in my kitchen!

Those 2x4s might keep ME from falling in the cement pond, but StanLee would fit right under there.

Troy was here again on Wednesday to start back-filling and compacting in the garage.  It's getting to be the time of year when I'm driving home from work in the dark, so good thing I've been "working the early shift."  My burglar alarm starts barking as soon as he senses activity outside, and these guys start their day a hell of a lot earlier than I do.  When Bryan told me I could live here through the whole process, he also said they would have me getting up with the chickens before the end of it.  No joke, people - no joke.  So now I go to work an hour early and come home an hour early, which allows me to see the progress in relative daylight.  Silver lining, I guess.

More fill and more compacting and more pushing dirt and boulders around on the outside on Thursday the 5th and GUYS GUYS GUYS!  I stood INSIDE my new front door!

Technically I did the day before also, but that was still quite a bit below grade.  Now I can walk right out my kitchen door!  Or more accurately, I can do a funky limbo move right out my kitchen door!

Here's the view from above on Friday, November 6th at 6:47am:

Mom and Roxie arrived to inspect the progress, and by the end of the day Troy had everything inside the cement pond buttoned up.

We're feeling the time crunch now because of the weather.  We got another reprieve (thank you, what a gift) but that means everyone on the planet who put their projects on hold is now hoping to jump start again.  The concrete slab pour is weather dependent and there's a bit more work to be done first.  That means Jason is up next.