Metamorphosis of 2644 South Park Drive: Week 4: Excavations

Markings on the front lawn to show there are no utilities in front. Aside from that, you'd never know anything was happening at the house.

The beginning of excavation: the big "digger" is inside the yard; the little one in front of the garage

The yard pavers were neatly stacked by the garage. Portions of the back fence can be seen propped against the pavers and lying on the ground in front of them. The transplanted lilac is on the right.

The excavator dug a hole 20' long, 20' wide and 81/2' deep, upon which will rest the new basement, dining room, master bedroom, and three-story elevator. Roughly 126 yards of earth were removed.

The dirt and other debris were deposited into the dump truck and hauled away.

One of nine hand-dug excavations for new footings that will support posts holding up the new second story of the house. These new footings are required because our existing 1925 foundation has no footings!!

The orange markings show two other hand-dug footings, located deep in the crawl space and therefore the most difficult to excavate.

another of the nine footings

Dirt removed from the hand-dug footings was stockpiled in this basement space--we estimate the total accumulation to be around 15 yards.

1925 beer bottles that were found buried in the crawl space dirt

The end wall of this basement room had to come down. It was removed in two sections, first by using a cement saw and then having the excavator pull the loosened section away. It was fascinating to watch the excavator pull away the wall in about 2 minutes. It would have probably taken a couple of hours to remove the wall manually.

preparing to remove the first half of the wall

first section of the wall--gone

Justin sawing the second half of the existing wall

preparing to remove the second section of wall

It's gone just like that!

The wall now is entirely gone. Our contractor was nervous about how stable the remaining structure would be and decided to add reinforcement, which you'll see in later photos.

Justin and Dave Ghan began shoveling the 15 yards of footing dirt out the opening into the open excavation. The excavator had a suggestion for expediting this process. See next few photos.

Small excavot to the rescue. The skill level of Ron, the excavator, was extraordinary.

Ron reached into the storage space and pulled the 15 yards of dirt out, with Justin and Dave feeding the dirt into the excavator bucket.

dirt virtually gone from the basement in about 20 minutes

sweeping out the residue

finishing the hole--clean as a whistle

gravel placed into the hole

One part of the temporary reinforcement of the basement space is the plywood shear wall shown in this photo. The shear wall is bolted both to the remaining wall and the basement slab.

Another part ofr the temporary reinforcement is this steel brace.

entryway cut between the kitchen and pantry/playroom

The chimney has been removed down to the level of the mantel. The resulting opening between the living room and kitchen will become a framed wall on the living room side and cabinetry on the kitchen side.