Did I mention we have rocks?

Future rock garden

Two of these rocks will remain here (the one I'm sitting on and the one directly behind it). They are to the right side of the porch view so won't be too in-your-face. I'm going to mound up soil and fill in with hostas and flowering ground cover. The rock to the left has already been moved to a more pleasing spot and it too will get flower treatment. It's sunnier in its spot though so I'll be able to do lilies and other sun flowers.

Standing in the footer trench

Chris is in one footer trench, taking the picture of me in the other. Everything is dug out now and the cement guys are coming Friday to pour the footers.

Excavation dirt

Look at that sandy soil! We mainly have forest loam but the dirt in the foundation site has been surprisingly sandy with a hard clay base. Some big rocks as noted above but mainly Adirondack clinkers of a couple feet diameter. We're building the house where an old barn foundation stood. We kind of assumed that whoever built the barn there did so for a reason. Good drainage. Firm soil (the barn foundation hadn't really shifted at all).

For those interested, we disassembled the barn foundation and saved the rocks for use in future projects.  As we were doing the disassembly is when we decided it was a barn not a house - we've found lots of equipment related metal bits and some cool old bottles. Need to do some dating of the finds once we have time to get into the research.

We took our plans to Curtis Lumber to get the materials estimate. They're backed up with the prime summer building season (who says housing starts are down?) so we may have a materials delay. But we still need to install the radiant floor tubing before pouring the slab so we have some time yet. And it won't hurt anything if the slab sits for a little while before the framing starts. Although since the cement is going to be our finished floor we'll likely need to do something to keep it safe and clean. Huh, have to give that some thought.