Cave-ins, footings, and alien communication

Cave-in... ugh.

I don't know if I jinxed it, but sure enough, we have a cave-in with the neighbors.  It happened when the excavator was scooping for a window well.  The fill under the existing retaining wall and a section under their walkway collapsed.  On the bright side, the retaining wall would have become obsolete since the city was requiring us to raise our grading to the same level as theirs.  Fingers crossed that the walkway can hang on for a few weeks until the dirt can be replaced around the foundation.

Making an executive decision, our contractor decided that any window wells along that side would need to be added after later, and not poured along with the foundation.  Hard to argue with that.

Footings or alien language?

I guess I really didn't know what footings looked like, but they look like a giant outline of the house... and a little like crop circles. There also seem to be footings under the stairs and the wall in the dining room.  It's pretty surreal seeing the first hint of the house actually in place.

Front view, front square will be the front porch.  You can also see the "L" shape which is the stairway. 

Back view, the square in the foreground is the back porch.

Note the cement forms for the basement walls standing in the middle of the house?  We stopped by today as they were being delivered.  Sounds like cement is coming on Monday!

Holy hole!

With demolition complete on Tuesday, the last of the house was hauled away by the end of Wednesday.  I stopped by the site on my way to work this morning since it seemed to be the only opportunity to see things in the daylight.  Trivia: only 1 more week until days start getting longer.  

What a tiny hole!  The old house had a small foundation and a shallow basement, so I guess it's to be expected.  Wayne, the demo/excavator, was also there and was able to give me an update.  He was meeting the surveyor at 8:00 am, then the city inspector later in the morning.  He was pretty convinced that we would have a basement dug by the end of the day.  

Seems reasonable.  Shuffle a little dirt...  haul away a tree stump...  no prob, right?  After dinner, a family outing to the health club, we drove by the site.  As we drove up the street, the first thing we saw was the giant pile of dirt at the front of the property.

We climbed up the pile to take a peek.  Then we saw the giant, meteor crater that will be our basement. It is a big freakin' hole.  

Is that a volcanic cone forming in the background?

Anyone else worried that the neighbor might slide in, sink-hole style?

Next step is foundation.  Not sure of the timeline, but I think with the weather being so cooperative, the goal would be ASAP.