Countdown has commenced!

It's been a long time since I posted, but there hasn't been much exciting to report.  It's been a lot of drudgery as we work to fully, completely clean out the basement.  The hard part was the workroom side, since Osc had stored hundreds, if not thousands, of potentially useful odds and ends over the years.  We dealt with scrap metal/pipe, scrap wood of all types, coffee can upon coffee can of miscellaneous nuts and bolts ... and that's just the stuff we could identify!  Seriously, there were many old tools and icky items covered in grime that we couldn't even figure out.  Needless to say, the trashmen have been our best friends these last few weeks.  We even got two "bagsters" and filled them to the brim.  (Mostly they were filled with boards that came from demolishing the old coal bin and various shelves that Osc had built around the basement.)

Anyway, I've been waiting to post until I could show some photos of the empty, cleared-out basement.  It's not quite empty now, but it's close.  And I've been harassed by eager fans -- well, one fan anyway -- so what the heck!   So here are a couple of views of the basement.  First is the northeast corner (under the front parlor) and second is a view of the whole basement while standing near the southwest corner (by the areaway door).

We still need to take the workbench and work table out, along with a few tools and our basement refrigerator.  The contractor will take care of removing the furnace and water heater.  Also, he has to have his HVAC guy remove all ductwork that extends below the joists (which is pretty much of it) because the lifting steel has to be able to slide in under the joists.

One sad thing that has had to happen is that we had to have three trees removed.  That was this week.  They were all so close to the house that for years I have fended off all sorts of tree guys who come through the neighborhood offering to trim them back away from the house.  And we've been nervous about them during strong storms as well.  Still, I hate to lose trees.  After the project is done we will look at planting at least one replacement, depending on what our neighbors think.  Here's a picture of the denuded area (north side of the house, alongside and behind the true front porch):

As you can see, we are really gearing up for this.  The contracts are signed, the basement is (mostly) empty, and trees are gone.  All that's left is packing up, since we'll be out of the house for about 7-8 weeks, and making sure to remove all of our valuables.  Here's the timeline:
* We move out on Thursday, May 23rd (the kids' last day of school)
* The local contractor does the utility disconnects and other preparations for the house moving company
* Wolfe House Movers comes in around May 30-31 or June 3-4 to excavate the old foundation, position the lifting steel, and do the turn
* The local contractor and his subcontractors pour new foundation walls to a height of 6'6" and then they block the foundation up from there (this is the best method to deal with the house being out of square) to achieve the 9' height that we want
* Then we'll have a mason coming to install natural limestone veneer over the foundation, so it maintains the historic "stone foundation" look -- without all the leaks!!!
* Utilities will be modernized and re-hooked up.  At this point we can move back in.  The contractor is guessing this might be about July 19th.
* A couple more weeks of carpentry work on the front and back porches will finish the job off, hopefully by about August 1st!

So....twelve more days to go.