Next Steps

Ok- sorry. 

Been 11 days since we have worked on the porch. We needed to reach our consultant. So after a real healthy martini last night we considered next steps with Steve. 

And the next step was what to do with the concrete steps leading to the old porch. 

We could take a hammer drill and break them apart, and my arms would feel like jello. OR I could dig a hole and dump the steps into the hole. I settled for the second option. The benefit

 of the second option, besides losing a couple pounds, was that all the dirt I dug out could be used to fill the rest of the

 space. Steve felt we were looking at a lot of cement to pour to get up to the house level unless we had some more fill. Digging a grave for the steps will give us the fill. 

Today, after a couple aspirin, I started digging. I used my favorite gardening tool which is a mini pick ax to loosen the dirt and then the shovel to move it down the length of the space. It took about 5 hours, 6 bottles of water and a little Brian Setzer Orchastra ("Ain't gonna heat this house no longer, ain't gonna need this house no more")

Here is a before and after picture. Time to lock the kitchen door. If Brad uses this door 

to get to the grill to flip the chicken, he'll won't have far to go to his grave. I dug 1.5 feet to the top of the cinder blocks and then another 2 feet down. When I stand in the pit, my chin is

 level with the kitchen floor. 

I feared I would hit ledge. The problem would be that after all that digging, I'd still have to hammer jack the steps. I thought I'd hit ledge because the cinderblocks in the front (facing Sarah's) hold water and we assumed it was ledge that was underneath the cinderblocks holding water. Well, good news was I did not hit ledge. But I did hit clay.

 Fascinating. It really acted like slightly moist clay. At the bottom of the hole I was more carving than digging. 

One freaky part was when I was widening the wall of 

the hole, I discovered a 8" hole/cavity under 18" of earth. Not sure who or what made it but I didn't want to stick around too long to find out.