New basement!

Due to the climate in Duluth, construction workers need to put in footings somewhere around 72 inches below ground, which is more or less the depth of a basement, and as a result, for us to add a full basement underneath our addition, it more or less costs about the same as without. So we're going for it. Somehow, they are able to connect the new basement with our existing one and waterproof the connection (this sounds crazy and impossible, but supposedly it can be done!). And at some point they will cut a hole in the wall of our existing basement and make it a doorway into the new one!

That being said, today was basement-pouring day! The masonry guys where bright and early (around 7:30ish?) and started the day by standing around the hole gawking at the swimming pool, the muddy erosion and the cave-ins around and on top of the footings. They left and returned with shovels and cleaned everything up before piecing to together styrofoam molds with weird plastic things inside that are used to hold rebar. Then the cement trucks came. It took two trucks to fill the molding, the first truck being the BIGGEST CEMENT TRUCK EVER on the face of the planet. It practically touched the sky. Well, maybe not quite, but almost. There was little hang up when the cement was too much for the styrofoam molding and it blew out the corner, but it was patched together with some boards, and the mess cleaned up. In the end, all is well, and at the end of the day, we have new basement walls! There is no floor yet though because the dirt bottom is still too wet and sloppy and they need to haul in some gravel or something to pour on it first before they can pour a cement floor.

A piece of the styrofoam molding with the funky rebar holders inside.  Surrounded by tubing used for drainage that will be buried around the outside and inside of the footing.

The biggest cement truck on the planet. It had to open up/extend the boom so that it could fit underneath the powerline that goes to our house. CRAZY. 

And just for good measure....the chair-sized boulders they found while excavating that our two favorite geologists just could not pass up....We (aka the guy with the backhoe) are going to put them somewhere for "decoration" when the work is done. Near the back stoop perhaps.