Moving dirt and house plans!

We've had a few big projects going this weekend.  First, we had Chad Bowen of Bowen excavation come out and start working on the drainage behind the greenhouse and creating the pad for the second green house.  As of the first day, he's done amazing work.  If you need excavation/dirt moving work done in the Lawrence area, I would highly recommend him.

I didn't have the camera to capture the start of his work, so you'll have to imagine.  First, I marked out a 45x105 foot rectangle to be leveled.  Then, Chad scraped off the topsoil from that whole area and piled it up out of the way for us to use in garden beds later.  Next, he scraped of the next few inches to the side around the pad and did some leveling before starting to remove material behind the greenhouse.  He's cutting about a 12 foot wide flat space behind the greenhouse and then reshaping the hill.  After he's done, we'll seed grass over the space to hold the soil.

Chad Bowen with his excavator

Progress today behind the greenhouse

Larger view of the new pad

HUGE rocks from the hillside

While hanging around watching (marvelling) at Chad's artistry with the dozer, I started working on the final plans to the house.  We're using a plan from one of our timber frame books as a baseline and then making modifications.  In order to start doing the timber frame joinery, we need fully dimensioned prints so that we know where to put the joinery.  I've finished the main side view drawing and am currently working on the end views.  Its only been 14 years since I did manual drafting, so this has been a bit of a blast from the past.  For those wondering why we aren't doing this in some kind of CAD program, I have 2 things to say.  First, are you really surprised that we would do this old school?  Second, most CAD packages are quite expensive and that's a problem.  I would actually prefer to have this done digitally, but this will work.

House sketch