The contractors (just 2 of them) built the exterior walls in 1 day, very impressive.

Back of the addition.
This is the north side of addition.  The small opening will be the bathroom window.
This will be the south side of addition.

Next the contractors laid down the subfloors and floor joists.

Now the foundation walls are done and covered with waterproof membranes, it is time to backfill the soil.  With the tiny backhoe all it takes is a couple of hours.

Backhoe at work.
We will still need to level the soil in the coming spring and cover them with gravels.

The concrete trucks come today and pour concrete in between the wooden boards.

After pouring concrete, the wooden boards were then taken off the next day.  Viola!  Here is our new foundation!

View 1 of the walls.  Notice the future location for windows.
View 2 of the walls.
This is the root cellar/cold room wall.
Inside the foundation walls.
There are 3 layers our contractors put on the foundation wall below grade.  First layer is the Blueskin.  Next is black tar.  The last layer you see here is the drainage membrane.  Hopefully this will help prevent water and moisture from invading the walls.

On a Saturday another crew of concrete workers came and form the foundation walls.  They setup the wood boards and 2x4s so that the concrete will be poured in between the boards.

View 1 of the walls.
View 2 of the walls.
A look inside the walls.

The concrete workers came the next day to lay the footings for the wall.

The small rectangle room at the back of the picture is our future cold cellar.

Following the completion of the septic system we are ready for the addition.  It took us more than 3 months to kickstart the project since we first signed the contract with our contractor.  We have much trouble getting the building permit from the town, mostly because of the vast paperwork and preliminary requirements that have to be met.  I figure out I have to keep on top of the town clerks and call them every other day in order for the application process to flow.  I had to repeat and explain the same things to 5 different town employees.  All in all, it was a tiring but interesting process. 

My contractor from Gordon contracting is very nice.  He is patience with me along the way with my many questions.  So finally we got the building permit on Dec 11, 2012.  And the excavation started right away.

Digging down about 5 feet we see some water at the bottom.  The whole addition is about 22'x23'.
We are attaching the addition to our existing home.  You can see that the bricks have been peeled off.
Back of the home.

This fall, we have big construction project at our home. We need to replace our 36 years old septic system. It lasted about 2 weeks and the kids enjoyed watching the big machines working. It was amazing that a 2-person crew could dig up so much soil and level the ground in a short time. One surprise we found out was that the original septic system had no sand or minimal gravels for drainage. The contractor said he had never seen anything like this before. He couldn't understand how the system would work for 36 years. Well, we don't have a single sewage backup for 6 years and I do thank God for keeping the system working.

Now we are waiting for the building permit for our addition. My hope is that the new space would give us some extra room for homeschooling and home business. And Kay can have her cold cellar to store the grains. We pray that God would give us some decent weather before Christmas to allow the foundation to be laid properly.

This is the new septic tank.  It has 2 covers for access with filters that I need to clean once a year.
Since the elevation of our front lawn does not meet requirement, we also need a pump chamber with a submersible pump installed. Any grey water from the septic tank would flow into this chamber and pump out to the tile bed.
As you can see, we have to dig down to almost 5 feet and bring in clean sand.  What a big project!

Last year we posted that we got 2 air rifles for the family.  Since then the kids enjoyed the shootings from times at tin cans.  As I mentioned in that post, we need the real stuff to kill off racoons and pests, so I went for Firearms Safety course in May and I got my license after 3 month's wait.  The first rifle I now possess is a Remington 597 semi-automatic .22 LR.  It is affordable comparing to other brands. However, I would have to build or buy a bullet trap to collect the bullet heads because they are made of lead.  I would like to get lead-free ones but I can't find them locally.  I might add to the collection someday a .30-30 when Joshua is older so he can inherit the .22LR.