So it's been almost a month since the very first entry to this blog. There were delays in getting the demolition cleaned up.  Then some weather delays to begin excavation. The large front-loader not being available on the good weather catch-up days. But they have now excavated and graded the property.  Glen spent all day this past Wednesday, the 25th, making sure they were digging in

the right places. There was much debate about the depth of the excavation.  At one point they were off 33 inches. The 33 inches needed to come out and the builder disagreed.  After two hours of re-measuring, and the excavation guys standing around on our dime, they straightened it all out and dug some more.  The worst thing to come out of the day was the precious tree closest to

the house.  They severed two large roots and got way too close to the tree. Closer than they were supposed to. We purposely cantilevered the second floor 4 feet over the first floor on that side of the house to avoid disturbing the tree. We now realize they didn't look at the plans correctly and dug the cantilever area for the first floor, thus getting too close to the tree. This of course happened during the one short period of time that Glen wasn't there yet. They over-shot by four feet.  So not only is our tree at risk of dying, it quite possibly is also unstable. I will be calling some arborists next week to find out what to do. I am very sad about this.  This tree is crucial to the good "ju-ju" of the old house being in the new house.