A Beautiful Sight

Today when I pulled up to the house to meet with Robby and Joey (our builder) it was such a beautiful sight to me.  There were lots of trucks there, multiple things happening at once, and very real progress being made.  The demo on the inside is really coming along, the clearing of trees and grading got started with a bang today, and all of that means we are so much closer to really getting started with the building!

Seeing this big piece of equipment that Hudson kept calling a tractor made us all really excited.

Seeing it in action was another thing.  When I heard that they would be taking down the trees today and starting grading I figured they would cut down trees in pieces, starting at the top, like a tree service would do.  We were out there talking with Joey and the next thing I knew was this bulldozer was pushing trees over and literally snapping them like twigs.  It was pretty impressive to see what quick work they made of it.

Hudson was loving it and every time a tree would fall he'd point to the next one and ask if it was coming down, too. 

The inside walls and ceiling in the back of the house are all down to the studs and ready for the higher ceilings and new walls to be framed.

And they are working their way up to the kitchen area.

The real wow factor was when I brought the girls by after school to see some of the action taking place.  We walked up and saw the island of trees that were totally blocking the house in the before pictures completely gone.  Handley's comment was, "WOW!!!  It looks so different now."  I totally agreed with her.  It looked awesome so opened up and felt like a real home site, instead of just a forest.

We got there just in time to see a GIANT pine tree fall.  I was amazed by the precision these guys had because that tree could have totally crushed the whole house, but the guy working the equipment pushed the tree exactly where he wanted it to go.  And the crazier thing is that with two guys working chainsaws and one in the bulldozer, the tree was completely removed from where it fell in less than 15 minutes.