Digging Under the Back Porch, Part 13

Another solo run day. Rather than throw every brick away, I tried to separate out the broken pieces from the salvageable ones. Chicago brick is easy to come by, but tried to keep what I could.

A bit more of the wall exposed. Who knew that we had a brick wall behind our other wall?

Wasn’t sure exactly how to clean this up. I may just clear enough away for the foundation pour, and deal with the rest of this once we have our base down.

Building a retaining wall, using Bob’s prior examples as a model.

One bummer: we were short on some lumber. So I ended up hopping in the car, and driving to the nearest Home Depot to get some more 2×3’s. I was quick, but still lost a bit of time.

Installing some Visqueen, preparing for the rain forecast for this afternoon.

The new wall, installed. Felt good to get this in, but it definitely consumed the first half of my day. I’m not sure what else I expected, but it’s been difficult to shake the sound of a ticking clock, lately.

Cleared out this area, by the driveway.

Pulled up a lot of brick, by the basement door. Unlike the walls nearby, these bricks were just set next to one another, sans mortar. So they came up pretty easily.

More bricks removed.

Bricks, relocated and organized.

Bricks removed, but still a decent amount of soil left.

Per Bob’s advice, we want to do a 4″ pour of concrete on top of a 6″ base of gravel. Which means I need to get 10″ below where the basement door is at.

Good work today, but definitely more work in my future.

Related:
Digging Under the Back Porch, Part 12