The pile is gone

When I looked at the pile of dirt -- all 351 cubic feet of it -- at 2:30 PM yesterday, I honestly thought it would only take a couple of hours to help gravity get it all back in the hole. Wrong. In three hours yesterday, we only got it about 60% done. And it got harder today as we got closer to level ground, as gravity could no longer help.


We started this morning at 11, and at 5 PM (with some breaks, but not as many as yesterday), the pile was gone, and the hole was re-filled.

Raking the last bits of dirt 

Compare this to yesterday

I calculated we would not have enough dirt to re-fill the hole, and I was right. We pulled a 4' wide, 8' deep culvert from the hole, which is the same volume as about 16" of dirt in a 10' wide hole. Plus, we did not put a bunch of really big boulders back in the hole, and the dirt has not yet settled. It's supposed to rain for the next 2 days, which will help the settling process, but the short answer is we still need about 3 cubic yards of dirt to fill the hole. Next year.


My painter continues to plug along, and today basically finished the exterior work, which was only the exteriors of the two doors.

The front 

The back

He also did a scratch coat on a large section of the paneled wall. The small test section he did yesterday looked great, so we expanded.

Looking great

Now we are tired, and most every muscle in our bodies hurt from 2 days of digging.