Retaining Wall Revision

Friday must be concrete day. The truck came and went again without our knowledge. The girls and I drove up in the afternoon after spending and hour and a half at the Auto Repair shop. We discovered last weekend that on one of our forays up the hill, we drove over a stick 2" in diameter, which broke off to about 18" long in the right front wheel well. We apparently drove around with it for awhile before we found it and pulled it out. In the meantime, it gouged the inside of the rim, and scraped off all the wheel weights. Consequently driving to Pittsburgh and Morgantown this week was a jolting experience! It's all better now, and hopefully we'll be able to remain on the driveway, and not venture through the fields to get to the house. Super Handy-Man worked on the road this week, and it looks much better, even after the concrete truck came and went!

We found on Friday that the remainder of the basement floor was poured...

Here are J and Daddy trying it out on Saturday.

Several pallets of concrete block and a pile of sand were delivered on Friday as well.

Imagine our surprise on Saturday AM when we drove up to Poplar Ridge for our semi-weekly visit and hike, to see the masons hard at work on the base of our porch that will span the west side of the house and the garage! There will be 10 foot overhangs covering the porch, making it a nice outdoor entertaining area.

Initially, we thought we would have to build a huge retaining wall in order to have the porch on the west to be at ground level.

With some creative excavating, however, it appears that this will be the extent of the wall we will need.

This is the view from between the house and the garage.

The area inside the wall will be filled and the porch will be concrete (what else?). The remainder of the bank of dirt will be gently graded to ground level on each side of the house. What do you think Brother F?