Floors are poured, and no more mosquito breeding pond!

The whole family drove out yesterday to see the progress.  Chris and crew had already done the driveway shoring up.  This included filling and grading appropriately the area by the big spruce that was holding water, moving a culvert, adding a ditch to the north side of the driveway, and topping it all with class 5 gravel.  It looks really great, drainage is MUCH better, and was well worth the money.  Minnesota Power had also been there during the week, and the electric cable has been trenched in.  Both the garage and the basement floors haven been poured.  We are getting very close to the start of framing!

One thing I forgot to mention in the last blog entry among our list of exterior choices was the shakes that will go in most of the peaks.  It's Cedar Impressions staggered rough split shakes in their "cedar blend" color.  Unfortunately I just figured out about 30 seconds ago that you cannot get that color in their "staggered" look that we wanted.  Only in the "straight" look.  Seems like we have more shopping to do.  Regardless, here's a picture of the color we are after:  Shakes

Here are a bunch of pictures from yesterday:

Garage floor poured:

Basement poured:

Area around big tree after driveway was shored up, drainage improved, and mosquito farm was filled and graded:

Electric trenched in:

Tommy, as usual, off on his own independent adventure:

And a couple other random shots...first a view of the existing trail off of the backyard.  Prior owners used it for a 4-wheeler trail and probably access to their hunting stand:

Here is a view, standing on the easement section of the driveway, looking south toward where the driveway turns onto our property: