Back To Work

Oh why does this feel like the slowest project in creation?

I have to remind myself I am only one person with a shovel and a couple of buckets on the side of a hill that has been buried in snow or frozen solid of late. Relocating a thirty five foot long, six foot wide and about five foot deep section of earth filled with rocks, boulders and roots by hand is not for the faint of heart.














I've finally made it to rough grade for the back section of the basement patio. With a bit of fine tuning I will have 8' 2" of clearance for the patio floor to the bottom of the cabin floor joists and 8' 4" of clearance for the footing for the second dry stacked stone wall. Six inches of gravel will fill the wall footing and four inches of gravel for the patio floor.

Much further down the road landscape fabric will be laid on top of the gravel for the entire patio floor, gotta stack some rocks first so I can move some more dirt, then two inches of sand will cover that and then a stone floor can be laid.

I am aiming for 6' 9" of clearance beneath the main girders of the cabin.














The ground at this end of the cabin around the columns is five inches higher, following the natural rise of the ridge line. I'll need to adjust my two upper transition stones for the final finished floor level. No biggie.














This second wall is going to hit the four foot limit of a non permit requiring retaining wall. I'll have to do a little grade adjustment above it, which just means removing and reshaping a bit of the soil I shoveled up there.

It won't really be retaining much. It's almost more of a facing. This ground under the cabin has remained amazingly dry considering all the snow and rain we've had and the ground is solid and compacted enough that it has held the cut for quite some time without much at all sloughing off of the face of it.

I'll keep at it.
















That's life in the slow lane.