Digging to China...

Today was digging day. 

The front and side retaining walls just outside the house need to be installed before we can move in. Now that we finally have the building permit, today we hired a dingo and auger and drilled out the post holes.

First up though, moving the big pile of leftover crushed rock in the front corner. Ben set me up with a shovel, and it was my job to move the big pile onto the next level out of the way...it was a big pile of rock:

Took me about 20 minutes to move this much rock...very slow progress

Tough work...little did I know that Ben made me stick it out for about 20 minutes before coming along with the dingo and removing the whole pile in about two minutes!

Then came the real work...digging holes. Who would have thought holes could be so complicated?! With all of the measuring, working out the line, checking the measuring, double-checking the line, and getting the dingo lined up properly against these measurements, it took us about two hours to get the first three holes dug. Luckily, after the third hole we finally got the hang of it and managed to smash out the next seven in about 45 minutes. Ben has now decided that he might do a bit more of the hard landscaping himself. He says it is to save money, I think it's just so he can ride the dingo again!

My job was to dig out the loose soil after the auger - felt like I was digging to China! It also turns out that we sited the house in the right spot, as we came across rock in most of the front holes - luckily we came across hardly any during the actual build, or else that could have been expensive.

Now that's a deep hole!

There was some very tricky manoeuvring to get these holes down the side of the house done. The ones outside the kitchen will unfortunately need to be done by hand as the space is too narrow for even the smallest dingo. That will be a job for next weekend when the concreting starts...so, who's free next weekend?!

Meanwhile, inside the house we got a pleasant surprise as it looks like someone has been on site in the last day to install the shower screens, mirrors, and fly screens. 

I'm not sure the fly screen on the sliding door is going to stand up to the "doggy test" though, so we may need to look at some reinforcements once we actually move in. Considering that Oscar is a big fan of trying to let himself inside the house and Kody has been known to run through glass doors in the past, I think the current one may last all of about two minutes with those two.

We are getting very close to completion now. It was a pretty amazing feeling to walk around the house with the knowledge that in just a few weeks, we won't have to leave at the end of the day...