Baby got back(fill)

The exterior concrete stairs leading to the basement have been formed and poured, and the waterproofing is now complete around all of the finished portions of the foundation and around the stairs. The weeping tile around the exterior of the stair wall is also complete. As you can see from the photos, the guys have started to backfill (fill in the hole), which is great news. Once that's done, it will be a little easier for the crew to work on the site, and our neighbours' foundations will no longer be at any risk of frost or damage. We're also hoping that covering up the roots of the tree to the left of our house will make it forget that its feet were temporarily naked and exposed to the freezing cold.

In interior stair news, our guys have identified another stair supplier that might be able to build our stairs for a third of the cost of the quote we received from another company. We're keeping our fingers crossed that it works out; we would really like to not have to compromise those lovely stairs.

If you've read the entry on the height our building, you know that we've had to make some adjustments here and there to accommodate the rock that our house sits on. In the end, we basically had two options: add an extra stair to the front door outside the house, or add a step in the hallway of our front foyer going up to the first floor. We decided to preserve the original design of the inside of the house as much as possible and go for the extra step on the outside.

There's some lumber on the site now, stacked at the rear of the lot, just waiting to become our walls. We are very excited about the prospect of framing beginning next week. We can't wait to see walls!

On the NIMBY neighbour front, the saga continues. In fact, our troubles have intensified. We're not letting it ruin our excitement about our progress so far, but the exchanges are exhausting and demoralizing. We will soon be contributing an article on our construction to our community newspaper, so that should be a good opportunity to introduce ourselves and our project to the rest of the neighbourhood.

Until next time...