Fun with Dirt

What an exciting time! The excavator is back and prepping the area around the house for future gorgeousness (bets, anyone? a year? 5 years?). He saved the topsoil that he scraped off the mountain 2 years ago when he built the road. It's been in piles alongside our driveway ever since, growing some amazing grass and ferns. Now he's hauled it back and the soil quality was so good that they didn't even need to screen it (time-consuming and expensive process to get rocks and junk out of the soil).

This pic shows them in the process of leveling the back yard with the topsoil. You'll also see some small gravel which he is creating our driveway with, and some large "6-inch gravel" (pile on the left) which will be going behind our garage area to prevent erosion.
Below is a shot of them backing up into our back yard with a dumptruck full of topsoil. Lily was going crazy with all the weird noises - crashes, beeps, crunches, etc.

Fun with mud...Gary had to level out the floor upstairs before putting down the final flooring. A high beam in the framing process led to an uneven patch in the floor. Gary has been putting down a goopy concoction called "floor leveler" to make it nice and level once it dries. I can't wait to get that final flooring down so we can finish out our hall and office!

Below is the latest step in siding -- the side of the garage. The wooden strip you see running horizontally is a ledger board for a future carport roof.

Below, another shot of the garage side. Only one more side to go and then some "punch list" siding patches to finish around the back side of the house...hoping to be done shortly, as long as the snow holds off. Finally, they are going to put up the facsia (along the roof edge) and our roofer is supposed to come back and screw in the final roof rakes. Snow, please hold off a little longer!!