Thursday, January 30, 2014

Update #4 A Man and His Dozer

A man and his dozer. 
It's a very personal thing.


Perry on the dozer making me nervous once again.

The end of June 2013 found us breaking ground or to be more exactly, we were moving it. Tons and tons of it.

 Mr. Engineer-Husband estimated it to be 3,300 cubic yards of d-i-r-t.
Yep. That's alot of dirt.


The house site had been marked early on and surveyed. (surveyed by Perry and Junior. Perry is also a a Mr. Surveyor-Husband.) We were anxious to get it all dug out and ready to build on.

We were moving, and excavating and pushing and scraping and shoving and you name it, Perry and the dozer or the excavator did it.


1st day moving house dirt


I would sit for hours and watch him. It's a good thing I did! There were a few times when I though for sure I would be calling 911 or at least attempting to send up smoke signals to brother in law Scott, who happens lives across the valley. Don't get me wrong, Mr Engineer-Husband is a master of driving  equipment, excuse me, OPERATING of equipment, but he was doing some heavy equipment acrobats that made me nervous.

All in all....he was never hurt and neither were any farm animals. It's all good!


Blazing a trail


Some days he would get tired of digging the basement and he'd work on the driveway to the garage or the main road up to the house site.
 Day in and day out he dug and shoved.
Bob the Builder ain't got nuthin' on Perry.

Working on the driveway

Putting in the driveway to the garage


Every day I was home (and not out doing ghost hunts or scouting new cemeteries)
 I would drive up and watch him work. Some days I took the ghost mobile but mostly drove the ol' John Deere Gator up there. 

The Ghost Mobile
My old faithful Gator- notice gravel on the driveway? :-)



The road to the house site was looking better and better with all the work Perry was doing.

 It was still dirt, but gravel would come soon, I was told. 




One more load of rocks up the hillside and then there would be no more.
Perry informed me that once the big hole for the basement was completely dug, no big trucks could take rocks up there and put them in the front yard as they had been doing.


Ok. Enough about rocks. The first day of digging had arrived.
.  
The Saturday night before the first dirt was dug, I had led an all night ghosthunt at the West Virginia Pen and was decked out in black like a Swat Team member gone rogue. The next day I was at the house site ready to see some earth moved and dressed up like farmer Joe. 

Except for these atrocious hot pink clown boots I would wear. Thanks, mom.
I love them.

 It was a far cry from the all black ghosthunt attire from the night before. 
(and a lot less cool looking)



But,we were both excited and ready for the event.

Perry worked non stop. From the last day of July through September 1st he was a little worker ant. (bee?)

 Every day after he finished his day job, would start up the excavator and dig.
 In the rain, in the heat of late summer and at night in the dark. I tried to be there as much as possible. I ran him up some water, some diet Coke and even a few dinners we ate up there out of a pizza box. (I wish we had pizza delivery here!)

 If I had a ghost hunt or haunted tour to run, he sometimes did it with me or stayed and worked pushing or digging dirt. That's when I worried about him the most. His brother Scott would check on him or his nephew Jack as they live about a mile away. 

PROGRESS!!
It was good to see the progress from down below. You can make out the new road and all those boulders that were placed in the front yard of the new house. Yeahhh!!



On one of those wonderful hot days when I was watching Perry work, I decided I was hungry and wanted to signal to Perry that I wanted to have lunch.

SO....I waved at him a few times and mouthed the word "lunch"  and shouted it and he pointed to his ears signalling he couldn't hear me. 

 I was sitting on the gator and was starved. I wanted lunch. I simply thought if I made the letter "L" with my hand, he would figure that lunch needed to happen.


For 20 minutes that day, I kept making the "L" sign at him while he operated the dozer. He would frown and keep on dozing. 

This went on and on for awhile until he finally shut the machine off and yelled at me "Why do you keep calling me a loser?"
Ummm. 
I did not realize there is a universal sign language of sorts (apparently) for machine operators and what I was doing was definitely not the Lunch signal.

Whoops.
It was a quiet lunch.



So the grading and the digging of our basement continued for over a month.
We sweated, and moved rocks and moved dirt until most night we dropped from exhaustion. Dirt was a 4 letter word.

But we were making headway!

July 2103

August 2013

Perry worked on a small access road around the front of the house as well. You can see my "little" rocks all piled up. It will be awhile before I can put them where I want them but I was content to daydream. 

Some night after Perry was done working he's complain of being beat to death by the equipment. After watching this video, I could understand why he was so sore.

The weeks went by. He worked. I gathered rocks and paint samples. I shopped for lighting fixtures. I know. I was waaaayyy ahead of myself.

Then it happened. 

We were all done with the basement digging!
 Finally. Woohooo!


Perry knew that there was clay in the soil where we would be digging.
Remember? He's Mr. Engineer-Surveyor-Husband.

 He is always thinking of creative ways to save money. We are selling the clay from the house site to a company in North Carolina who is making bricks out of it. Pretty cool, eh?

A handful of clay from the basement



You can see where the clay is at by looking at this photo. See the top layer?
That's the clay.



End of August 2013
Surveying the corners needed to be done and measurements set in "stone" for the basement foundation.


I was glad Perry had successfully dug the dirt and not one single call to 911 


The sunsets were a wonderful way to end the long days.
I couldn't wait till we could see this from the front porch and share it with family and friends.


Finally, it was time to get some good help. Perry got a great team to do the foundation work for us. Andy came on to the project and brought James with him to do the footers, lay the block and pour the concrete foundation. 
What a great team they are and hard workers! 

They have become our good friends as well.

The footers were formed and poured the 1st week of September 2013 and 24 yards of concrete was delivered. Did I tell you how HOT it was in September? It was a very warm month...good for house building but not for hot, back breaking, concrete work.

The first load of concrete had arrived and I was thrilled. No more mud in that area!

After the 30 inch wide footers were poured we would start the basement walls.
(of course he made the footers BIGGER than he had to) 

With over 4000 cinder blocks to be laid in the foundation basement, we were glad to NOT have to do this part of the work. I'm delicate, you know. AND I hit 50 in September. Oh.My.Aching.Back.

1st yard of concrete ready to pour!


The month of September ended.

 63 yards of concrete poured that month
 27 pallets of 12 inch cinder block delivered
1600 feet of water line and electrical line dug by Perry
and 1 nasty accident on site.

James met up with a big boo - boo.
He had a little accident with the Bobcat and his leg. 
(the Bobcat machine, not the Bobcat animal)

We had multiple issues with equipment breakdowns and now James would be off work and almost lost his leg! 

I know we have had some paranormal "issues" at out house on the property but what was going on here at the new house site?

Was the house site cursed?









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