The moment of truth. Last year we bought this house for a phenomenal deal. The catch, you ask? Sand- a lot of sand, in the basement. It is bad. Some of the basement has concrete, some of it is partially finished and the rest is just dirt and sand, which means that it is completely unusable space. Not to mention the hassle of trying to keep the kids out of it. It is pretty much the reason the house wasn't swooped off the market. Pops has been talking about getting it out of there for the last year. We knew it wouldn't be fun and we knew it wouldn't be cheap. Pops said he was going to enlist the kids and get a bucket brigade going the minute school let out for summer. Next he said he and the kids would do it as soon as we got back from Utah, which was the only reason I was happy to get back to work. But the reality was that there was so much of it- it would take a dumpster and the muscle and encouragement of the whole family. We mustered up our courage and ordered the dumpster for Labor day weekend.
Here it is:
It arrived the Thursday before Labor Day. By the time I got home from work, Pops had already started filling it up- two buckets at a time, with Superkid and Abizella doing the shoveling.
I didn't feel too bad that I had to work on Friday. By the time my Labor Day weekend began, the dumpster was half loaded!
That's when things got really interesting. Pops had spent the previous two days moving the sand out of this hallway in the basement. Notice how high it came up on the wall (4 feet) and it extended about 8-10 feet to a concrete wall and filled the expanse of the hall (about 5-6 feet). Pops is seriously gifted in the strength department.
The concrete wall had to come out and the only way to do it was with a jackhammer. How manly is that?! My man can do anything.
There was one last gigantic chunk that just wouldn't give.
But Pops is more than just a man of brawn. He is also a man of brains.
He decided to dig a hole and push it in.
It looks like Superkid could give this slab of concrete a little nudge and it would just topple into the hole. Wrong! Superkid, Pops and I pushed and pushed as hard as we could and it didn't even budge. Pops had to dig underneath the boulder to get that thing to fall.
But it finally did succumb. Pops and Superkid buried that bad boy! If anyone ever does an archaeological dig of the site, I'm sure they will assume it is some religious icon or something- but the truth is, it was just a pesky giant piece of concrete.
Pops was pretty sure at this point that we had more than the two ton limit of sand loaded into the dumpster, so he just threw in the paneling and ceiling tiles from the toy room to finish it off. I didn't haul an ounce of sand. Pops carried every bucket. And he was right- we got charged for being over the weight limit.
That's more than two tons of sand!
Everyone who has ever looked at the pile of sand in the basement shook their head in wonder at what it was doing there. I was sure we would uncover a body. What we found was actually worse. Whoever added onto the house, did not extend the foundation of the house from the new part to the old part. The huge pile of sand obscured this from view. That wasn't a cheap fix, but I'm glad it is now done right! You can see the awesome new foundation to Pop's left.
He and Superkid began the tedious dirty task of leveling the sand in the remainder of the basement.
And then the glorious moment! The cement mixer pulled up onto the back lawn and our cement guys poured our basement. This will go down as the one of our happiest moments as a family.
I can't tell you how wonderful it is to be able to walk the expanse of the basement without getting sand in my shoes. I can't tell you how incredible it is not to smell that dank earthy basement smell.
It truly is a sight to behold!
