Okay, the process actually started a year ago, when we first started talking to the contractor about doing an addition. We’d used them last summer to put in new windows in our dining room, which required some carpentry work too. (Two of the windows were about an inch above the roof of the bulkhead access to the basement, so splashing rainwater had been rotting out the windowsill for years. The windows are now smaller and up out of the range of the splashing water.) Stephen Ross is doing this project.

So, what we’re doing: Putting in a new living room, about 320 square feet, where our patio currently exists (or did until yesterday). Our current living room (small and quite near a semi-busy and loud road) will become my office and the kids’ work area; my office will become our bedroom; our bedroom will become a child’s bedroom eventually; Dena’s office will be in one end of the new living room; Dena’s office will revert to being only a pantry; the fridge will go in the pantry; our Ikea storage unit will go where the fridge is now; the fence at the front of our backyard will move towards the road by about 15 or 20 feet, getting a good chunk of the front yard into the back yard, hopefully making up for some of the yard space we’ll be losing. The new living room will have a bunch of built-in bookshelves and a nice window seat.

Whew.

So, on Saturday we heard from Stephen that they wanted to start digging on the 4th instead of the 13th. Exciting to be ahead of schedule, but it meant we needed to clear out the patio much sooner than expected. (We don’t plan to re-use the rocks immediately, but we will eventually, so we didn’t want those to get dug up by the excavator.) We also needed to move plants and — soon — fish.

Here’s what the patio looked like before. We’d let it get a little bit overgrown, knowing it was getting dug up soon.

Last summer I dug up and put in the outlines of a boundary for a new flowerbed across the yard from the patio. Dena moved a bunch of rocks over to make the boundary much more visible and moved some plants yesterday. You can see what it looked like midway through her work and after more work and some plants relocated. (We have more to move; we’ll see how many survive.)

The rock moving was my job, with Liam helping. And we got it all done, with one scrape (mine), one pinched finger (Liam’s), and sore muscles (both of us).

And the job completed:

-Bill