Boys and their toys

Sure beats a shovel

With the floor finished,covered and ready for winter it was time to finish back filling and to get rid of the piles of dirt. I ordered a few truck loads of sand to put against the walls for drainage. The  dirt was put against the sand. An advantage of sand is that it protects the walls of the basement from large rocks, of which I have plenty! I rented a skid steer for the day and had Zack come up to drive it because he has experience.  It was rented for Saturday so I went up on Thursday and stayed at the cottage. My brother Ian was doing some work there and needed some help wiring plugs. Friday morning was a nice fall day so I walked up to the lot, only to see the skid steer being delivered. I talked to the driver and he said Saturday was busy with deliveries so they started delivering equipment today. He gave me a quick lesson on driving a skid steer and he was on his way and so was I. I was glad nobody was around to see me drive because I was laughing out loud at how bad  I was. It took about half an hour for me to start getting the hang of it, then some major dirt was getting moved.  I only worked for about an hour and half before I had to leave to go home, then come up the next day with Zack. The next morning was cool and cloudy then turned into a nice day. When we got there Zack jumped into the skid steer and was off. I had to remind him a few times it wasn't a race car.  It took most of the day to get all the sand and dirt into place and got the skid steer stuck only once, at the side of the house. I wanted Zack to push the dirt closer to the wall so I wouldn't have to shovel as much. He said he couldn't because it was quite the slope and might get stuck. To that I said, "I did it yesterday and you won't get stuck,." Well, that was before I put a lot sand and fill there.....he got stuck!  He wasn't impressed and I had visions of telling the Rental company that the skid steer is ready for pick up but it's stuck.  Zack worked at it for 15 minutes and got it freed up and back up on level ground. With all the dirt moved, it was ready for me to put the house to bed for the winter with plans to start framing next spring, another long year done.

Starting to look like a house not a construction site