BIG TOYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now the real fun begins! The garage door was given to some guy from Craigs List, the rest of the garage came down, and the toys were delivered! I think this machine weighs in the neighborhood of 17,000 pounds, but Sam knows for sure. It is BIG.

Sam took to this back-hoe thing like a fish to water. In two days the garage foundation, the workshop floor, the driveway, the back patio- gone. All gone. There is a huge (hydraulic?) jack-hammer-like attachment, 5 inches in diameter, that goes (boom!boom!boom!boom!boom!) right through the concrete as if it were a sharp knife on a tomato. Then, like a horse nuzzling an apple on the ground, it just tosses aside these chunks of concrete that I couldn't make budge with my bare hands... and Sam could make budge only with some grunting effort!











You can see our 'half-house' here. DH came by to admire Sam's technique...





... but must've disctracted Sam a wee bit: after avoiding hitting the house at ALL, Sam hit a water line. You can just see the insta-fountain here. Unlike the machine itself, the insta-fountain made a beautiful, soothing sound...


...and a big puddle in the trench that had been dug for the gas meter! (that's the shadow of your intrepid reporter on the left there.)


Michelle came over to play with the toys, too. She loves power tools, so this was a dream come true!






The cats just sat on the trailer across the street, cool as can be, watching the proceedings and waiting for dinner-time...


The concrete got piled into four 10-ton low-boy containers and hauled away, and then we (notice how I keep using that "we", even though Sam did all the work, and I just photo-documented the thing?)... we started digging up dirt. Nathan directed. More dirt for Michelle's back yard!


So, as I left for work this morning, this is what our half-house looked like, from the back yard. (It's hard to get a good photo from the front because of the construction fence).




Today the plan was to dig deep trenches. More to follow soon! (Things are happening amazingly quickly, so I'm going to have to step up the pace in the blogging department!)