Well, I have not finished the earthwork. The first step is to remove all of the topsoil, and this is proving to be a long process. Our land used to be cultivated for, believe or not, cabbages. This was probably more than 60 years ago, but I think the cultivation resulted in deep topsoil. Anyway, the deep top soil, coupled with the rain we had on last Sunday and Monday (2.3" yikes!) has brought me up to today with still a little more top soil to remove. But I took some pictures anyway.



The first picture is of the pile of topsoil I have built up. The Newfoundland, Brie, is included for scale (she weighs 90 pound). It may not seem like much, but keep in mind that it is about 40' long. The tarp covered object in the background is a bundle of roof trusses. For some reason, even though I asked for delivery in January of 2007, the trusses came last week. I think that is part of the joy of being your own contractor.

The second photo is just a shot of the area where the shop will be situated, sans topsoil.

Hopefully I'll finish up the topsoil tomorrow so I can begin to cut down subsoil to the level where the shop will rest. The subsoil I cut out will become the shop walls.

A reader of the blog wanted me to post a plot plan of our property so as to have some sense of the scale of the aerial photo in the last post. It is a good suggestion, so here it is (Click the picture to see a larger image, and then, if using Internet Explorer, roll over the image a click the enlarge button that appears in the lower corner of the screen ).


The plot plan doesn't show the house and guest house footprints, but they will be east of the shop; the house will sit partially over the area where the existing crappy red outbuilding is currently sitting.