To blog?

Ok - so my initial feeling on blogging was not to, and so until now I maintained that. However - a realisation that blogging isn't for others, but for myself has made me re-evaluate that decision, and now that finally we have started the build it's the appropriate time to see if I can maintain this. Since I've never kept any type of Diary, this may be a discipline too far. But since I advised others to blog some of their adventures and ignore those who dislike the idea, I suppose I should follow my advice and hopefully have this to look back on once the pain is forgotten.

To recap on the last year we have had to:

• Obtain Planning Permission (obtained June 09)
• Apply for and be accepted in principle for a mortgage in this climate.
• Select a contractor for the structure (decided Dec 09)
• Obtain right-of-way to access the site (obtained Jan 10)
• Decide on contractors for other major items in the house (ongoing)
• Get an excavator and operator to dig (Mar 09)

As of Mar 19th we have offically started, with the excavator breaking ground. There is a massive amount of earth to be removed with the split-level over basement design requiring digging into the hillside. As of today we have excavated as per the picture.

Nothing is easy - already only 1 1/2 weeks into the build the changes and problems start.. first off the heating system may get a good bit more expensive due to the floor area of the build... that or we change tack and go with dirty old oil. Second and more immediate is while digging out the lower section for the basement we've hit 2 water springs that subsequently flooded down the road - the picture below is after we cleaned up a lot of washed out silt. The result of that is we may have to move the house back 4 feet or so and drain off the springs.

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