Thursday, October 14, 2010

it has begun...

the excitement, the stress, the mess, the decisions of our addition have officially begun. we broke ground on monday oct 11. dave and i have been dreaming of adding on to the house pretty much since we have moved in 3 and a half years ago. the house only has one bathroom and two official bedrooms. the room that is our room now, is not intended to be a bedroom. we talked with banks and figured out that we can do the addition to the house and still stay within out budget and since we have a renter in our garage apartment and we sold our double wide, the pieces of the puzzle kept falling into place for us to go ahead and do it! we are excited but there sure is a lot going on here and it is a little overwhelming.
we are going to expand out the back of the house. in the picture above you are looking at the kitchen window. we are going to come out right from that wall and go two stories up. i will have to scan our plans in and post them soon. we designed and drew everything up ourselves and dave and his crew are doing all the work. before we could do anything we had to take out that BEAUTIFUL magnolia tree you see in the above picture.
dave brought home the camps tractor in hopes of digging up some of the root and then pulling the tree down. i was a bit sad to see the tree come down and even got a little teared up when he hooked up to it and went to pull it down. BUT instead of it even budging the tree, it snapped his very strong straps and we needed to start rethinking how to take the tree out. at that point it became a battle with the tree and i wasnt so sad any more.
just another view of where the addition will go.
so this giant backhoe was the answer to the tree problem. we cut the tree down and then dave rented this piece of equipment to dig deeper and then pull the tree out like originally planned.
so this is what it looks like with no more tree..... we have a few more steps in the process done now, the area is all graded out and ready for the concrete footers and floor to be poured. more pics coming soon...

5 comments:

Ruth Poirier said...

WOW...WOW...WOW...How exciting!! Sad about the magnolia tree though. Can't wait to see more pictures and of course the addition in person.

Heather said...

how exciting! i can't wait to see it all come to life. i just love your house.

Tara said...

Oh my goodness, Bonnie! I had no idea that you all were thinking about doing this, but what a great idea! Though I am so sad to think about that tree not being there, I can't wait to see Dave's handiwork. What a blessing to have such a talented, and capable, husband and crew!!! Please keep posting pictures of the progress.

Linda said...

Wow Bonnie that is so exciting! Oh how I wish that magnolia tree had been planted somewhere else...it is gorgeous! Can't wait to see how things progress and though it is hard to live in a house where there is renovation going on...it is so worth it!!

leah said...

That is so exciting, I had no clue you all were going to do that! How neat that you made all the plans too!