The First Big Project, Day1

We have been working on the plans for many, many months and finally, it is time to get started!!! I'm talking about the plans to build up our back yard. This will actually be the first major project to start on this house and we are really excited about it. We really have a beautiful piece of property, with a lovely creek that runs right through our backyard. However, we just don't have much of a yard because the property is a bit too sloped. Bring in our landscapers (Beavers Landscaping) and their expertise and well.....we have a plan and Day 1 started today!!!

The blueprints for our "little project" and the before pictures...

In case you can't tell from the prints....we will be removing just a few trees, 32 in total (gasp! I did tell you we live in the woods right!??), building a small retaining wall, bringing in some dirt and creating us a backyard!! We are really excited about it and looking forward to seeing it all completed. Once it's complete, we should have a really fun area for the kids to run around and play in, as well as preserving the creek area and trying to keep things as natural as possible so we can still enjoy the running water and fun splashing around in the "river"as my kids like to refer to it as.

Here are the before pictures....

Here are the pictures following Day 1...

You probably cannot tell how strange this picture looks! To me, it looks like a huge hole of trees is missing! Tomorrow they will hopefully finish the job....not sure, they still have a quite a few trees to cut down and several of them are very big! I will try to get a picture of the guys hanging from the trees with their chainsaws, just hacking away! It was really unreal to watch!

My kids thought this was the neatest thing, they watched the guys bring huge limbs and small trees and feed them in to this machine as it turned it all to mulch! It was VERY loud, but like I said, the kids were fascinated and watched them for hours! They also watched the men hanging in the trees, cutting away and would try to wave to them and yell through the glass windows to get their attention. Occassionally they would get a wave back, but I am pretty sure the guys hanging from the trees with live chainsaws were really just focused on not cutting their arm off!! I'll try to get a picture of the action tomorrow!

The kiddos had fun playing on the stumps....is a high end playset really neccessary!!!

Can't wait to see what it will look like on Day 2!