This seismic project is really going to take a long time! OK, so I got started digging out the opposite side. I’ve been looking forward to removing this step for a while.
After I’d chipped out the steps, I realized: There’s going to be a gaping hole at the bottom of the door. I put the concrete breaking on hold while I worked on extending the door by 14 inches!
I just glued a piece of wood on the top and the bottom. Not the most ideal method, but it was quick, and this door isn’t a beauty. I then used 10″ long screws to screw through this wood into the door frame. Really difficult to keep the screw going straight: Actually it came out the face on a couple of places. Ooops.
This is how things looked before I got into messing it up (so tidy!):
First I took off all the concrete and put it directly into a big yellow sack. Then I got started on the soil. Manual labor is hard.
Here it is, dug out (well, as much as I can do right now). On the right side, the foundation is much higher up than the ground level, so I had to leave the soil sloped back to that. I’ll be taking out all that foundation eventually.
On the left side, because they had poured concrete against the wood, there’s gaping hole all along the bottom of their house where the wood has rotten about 2 inches into the wall. It was all filled with soil. Not good!
I saved the small pieces of broken concrete to use as gravel while I’m working on this. Hopefully it will keep the amount of mud down.
So that’s what two sacks full of soil and one full of concrete look like. The weather forecast says 1 inch of rain on Wednesday: That’s the day they are picking the sacks up. I’d better cover them with a tarp!