Brian, Eric, and Mark were here at the end of last week, checking off as many of the remaining small interior issues as they could, and also finishing the exterior work.
On Wednesday, they dropped off the excavator (an old friend):
The first major landscaping task was to move this brush pile (next to the new driveway)
down the hill to the left of the house
so that it can be burnt later on (probably by Natty and other Nates when we’ve had enough rain).
Mark (excavator guy) also collected most of the large rocks and made some piles so that we can use them to build a retaining wall when we raise the grade for the front steps.
The other major task was to use the “york rake” (a big rake on the back of another small tractor) to pick up all the large rocks and smooth the grade. They did a nice job. Here’s the smoothed out grade at the back of the house:
We may want to have a little more work done here eventually to make this area more level, but that can wait. For now, we have a relatively smooth slope from the deck down to the apple trees.
Here’s the smoothed yard to the left of the house (to the right, if you’re standing on the deck/porch and looking out to the view):
As Michael noticed, if you start where those hay bales are (approximately where the house used to be), it’s a pretty long (and somewhat terrifying) sledding slope down into the newly cleared area.
Finally, they spread grass seed over most of the smoothed area. Around the house, they spread a hay mulch that they say has the grass seed embedded in it. We’ll see.
Around 3:30 pm, Eric and Brian loaded up the rest of their tools and extra scraps of wood, etc. and left:
Someone from McKernon will be back in the next week or two to finish a couple other minor things, but their work here is essentially done. In a way, we’ll miss them, but we’re ready to regain custody of our home.
Grongar 