First Steps

 We've seen some progress this month! It's exciting to see things get started. 

First up was the driveway. The land came to us with a 2-wheel track through the woods. It was perfectly situated to reach the building site, but was a steep downhill into the valley, and an equivalent uphill to the future house. Not something that is desirable in winter with snow and ice. 

Two weeks ago the excavator came out to build up the driveway. Job one was to remove all the topsoil, which is not stable when wet and therefore does not provide a solid base.

Step two was removal of the topsoil from the hill in our small section of farm field in order to access the clay underneath

Then the clay was pushed through a gap in the tree line to the driveway, where a bobcat pushed it into place on the driveway. 

One layer at a time, the clay was put in place, then packed down by the roller. There were several layers built up, but I didn't watch closely enough to keep track of how many layers it took. 

Not quite finished driveway, from the middle to the road:

And from the middle up toward the house: 

It still awaits gravel, which will come as soon as the spring road restrictions are removed, and the top portion near the house and garage will get finished off after construction. 

This is the side view. That huge expanse of black dirt is the new hillside tapered down from the new height. A few trees got partially buried around the bottom. We might dig out around the most-buried one in hopes that we don't lose it to root suffocation. 

Today we had the first step toward actual house construction. The surveyors were onsite to stake out the corners of the house and shop, which is required before submitting our permit application. 

This is a shot of the home site, taken from the top of the mountain of topsoil that is currently piled on the west end of the "house". They put stakes at the actual corners of each building, and also further out from the ends to make the string lines that later will make the front and back lines of the house when they excavate. The tall black stakes that are visible are the ones Sid and I had placed to approximate the house position. We weren't too far off in our estimate. :)  The first black stake and the second wood stake are at the house corner. The second black stake is at the front door. At the far end of the house, and going out to the right, are the stakes for the shop.

We also had the surveyors add some additional stakes along the north property line. Originally only the property corners were staked, and that line goes over a hill and through the woods. It was impossible to see both corner stakes at the same time, and therefore impossible to know where the line was in the trees. Now we can tell exactly which trees are ours, or not, before we start cutting out buckthorn, or making other changes. 

Now we are awaiting the final plans from the architect. He and the contractor need to confer on some of the details before those are drawn up. Then we can submit our permit application!!