Blasting

Kim and I ventured up to see the site blasting this morning. It's a big job, and a company from Plantsville, CT, Blastech, Inc. is doing the work. First they drill holes.

Then then fill the holes with a combination of Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and Ammonium Nitrate and wire everything together. In this case, the equivalent of about 600 lbs of explosives.

For some reason, Brie seems to think she's going to be left up in the blast area. Smart dog, but it makes me think there is more to her past than I thought.

We took one more picture of of the ledge before it becomes a hole waiting for a basement.

Then they blast. You notice there is no picture or movie of the actual blasting. That's because Wes, Kim and I were talking down at the bottom of the drive-way, when all of the sudden a horn started going off signaling the blast was about to happen. I fumbled with my new iPod with the built in video camera for five seconds only to realize too late, that the little dickens was locked. At least we got to see the blast and come close to getting showered with rocks. Here are a few after shots.

They have two more blasts to do tomorrow. One for the Barn area and another to level an area on the driveway. With luck, Lee is back to work by the weekend and after digging the rock out, he can start the foundation next week.

Kitchen Design Session II with Kelley

My sister Kelley joined me at Home Depot on Saturday to fine tune the kitchen and bath cabinet selections. Kelley was SO excited that we have added a garage to our kitchen! A garage? Yes, a nook with a sliding door to hide our coffee pots. I can hear them sliding in their parking spots now.

Kelley puts everything away in her tidy kitchen, well, not Mya, Greg and the dog.. but practically everything. I'm sure Kelley would like to garage, possibly even tow MANY things currently on our counters. My raisens and almonds still have a place on the counter, although I will clean up my act when I move to a new house :)

We think we got a good deal from Home Depot as they are running a sale thru May 2nd, where the more you spend the more you save. You should have seen the look on Wayne's face as he tried to understand that adding cabinets to the laundry room was going to ... 'save us money'. After a while I felt like Lucy talking to Ricky Ricardo. So basically we are getting the kitchen, laundry room and 2 large bathroom cabinets from Home Depot and chose the Decora brand which have solid wood doors and drawers. For the kitchen we would like the Harmony, Cherry wood, Brandywine stain (www.decoracabinets.com/).

We still have to pick out countertops, but we are pretty sure we want to go with a local cement craftman. Here is a photo of a possible kitchen cabinet handles, nothing earth shattering, but a break from more dirt photos at least. BUT...for those partial to dirt photos - stay tuned for 'blasted dirt' hopefully later this week.


Possible handles:

More pictures of dirt

I met with Wes and Lee today at the site.  They have marked the three or four areas that need blasting and have one of the two estimates in.  If all goes well, the blasting should occur late this week or early next.  Either way, I'll be there to watch and perhaps push the button. 

We've decided to blast for a full basement, which is about 10 feet at the high point.  This will also give us material to use for retaining and stone walls.  While we're blasting, we'll also remove the 'hump' in the driveway we left last fall. 

I'm still not able to envision the house within the area cleared, but it looks like there will be some nice rock outcroppings near the house.  Below are some more pictures of the site.  The next post should include some pre and post blasting shots.

 

More Site Clearing Pictures

The weather finally cleared and the ground dried last week, so Lee and company were back to clearing the land and cleaning over the ledge.  Below are some shots that Wes took.  The next step is to get a couple of companies in to give estimates on the blasting.

Alternatively, I was going to look up an old friend with military contacts and see if we could call in a 'Platoon' like air strike.  If I can't get a hold of him, I'm thinking of renting a U-Haul and heading to North Carolina to stock up on some fireworks and do the job myself.

A short visit with Dakota

After we left the building site, we stopped by Suzi and Ed's place to meet Dakota and the other horses.  Suzi was riding Dakota down in her Horse Rink and came up to meet us.

Here Mia is giving another of the horses some carrots, and as we can see in the last picture, Dakota really, really want's his share of carrot as well, and is letting Mia know it with a gentle nose nudge.

Clearing the site has started

Grace and Mia visited us this weekend, so we took a ride up to Kent to meet Wes and see how the clearing was going.  Here's a group shot at the top of the hill.   This is after I made Grace, Mia and Kim climb through the mud to get to a 'better' vantage point.  Even though I didn't admit it to them at the time, it was the same view they could see from the other side of the muddy ravine I made them go through .... oh well ...

Lee, from Rock On was hampered a bit last week with the rain and mud, but is making steady progress.   Unfortunately, as we thought, Lee discovered a lot of ledge on the site, and now we must blast.  The good thing is it might mean a full basement under the entire house (versus a partial full basement and a crawl space) and it will mean that we'll have some rock to use for retaining walls.

The really bad part about this blasting is that I won't be around for the next two weeks and wanted to see it.  I guess I can't put the project on hold, but I'm hoping someone can video the event for the blog.

Below is a shot of the clearing on top of the hill, minus the group shot.

And here is a picture of the type of equipment Lee and Rock On are using to clear things.  What I didn't get a picture of is the mountain of wood chips that we now have from the cleared trees.

 When we were leaving the site, we looked back and took this picture of some rock outcroppings that will be up near the house.  We'll be incorporating these into the lower patio.

Breaking Ground

Well, I think we are finally on our way. We asked Lee, the owner of Rock On Excavation LLC to start clearing our land as of Monday. Kim and I visited the site Saturday with Wes our architect, and I took the picture below of Lee, Kim, and Wes in front of the chipper that will leave us about 200-300 yards of wood chips when all the clearing is done.

We used to use about 9 yards of mulch every year in our yard in our old house and that seemed like a lot. In Kent, we plan on building a nice winding trail to Suzi and Ed's place next door in addition to using the chips as mulch around the house.

After we left the site, we went over to Suzi and Ed's house and got together with a few of our new Kent neighbors for dinner. What a great group of people. The more we come up to Kent, the more we look forward to living there.