A Tale of Two Houses

It has been interesting to follow the rebuilding of the houses on either side of us. The top picture is of the progress so far on the house that we see outside our living room windows. The property owners live in a large RV on the property but seem to have taken themselves off to parts unknown while the constant earth moving has driven us nuts. We can't ask them what on earth is going on so we have to make up our own story in line with our own biases.

We think they had a pretty unbuildable site by today's stricter standards, and to complicate matters they seem to have moved the house site closer to the cliff and redesigned the house. They have moved hundreds and hundreds of tons of dirt and rocks, and poured load after load of concrete foundations, (topped with little orange thingys. ) When we thought they had finally finished moving dirt, packing up their beeping bulldozers and hauling them away on flatbed trucks, they came back and dug yet another deep hole (visible on the lower left hand side). It's beginning to look like a fortress.

If they're not moving dirt or pouring concrete they seem to spend a great deal of time standing around or staring into the holes and trenches they've made, pointing,  waving their arms around and conferring. Despite all the earth moving, It's still a steep site and the workers' hearts just don't seem to be in it. Perhaps it takes all their energy just to lug boards and equipment around. Our theory is that things aren't going well and they are kind of making it up as they go along. Then they have to wait for another inspection which seems to turn up a new problem. Or at least call for more digging and rearranging of dirt. We're wondering if maybe they bit off more than they can chew....

By contrast, the house on the other side is quickly taking shape as a house. The lot is flat and the footprint of the new house is the same as the previous one.They extended the second story out a few feet to give them a little more space and to make the facade a little more interesting.The framing crew seem to be a cheerful lot, as if they enjoy seeing a house quickly taking shape as a result of their labors. We hear them laughing and talking as they scamper around on the roof joists. The bottom picture shows the temporary walkway they built around the taller section of the house to allow them to raise the roof trusses. It looks like it's going to be a much steeper roof than the previous one. They set them all up and secured them in a day. I took a picture of that from our fire garden this evening through our hogwire fence, and am putting it in extras. 

The contractor is a very friendly fellow, fills us in on what they are doing, and gave us his phone number to call in case we have any complaints. We just keep telling him that we're happy to see a new house taking shape. We are friendly with the property owners and they also keep us informed on their progress. 

As a footnote, they lost a house to Hurricane Andrew in Florida when they were both in the Air Force and stationed at Homestead Air Force Base, so they are no strangers to disaster and seem to know how to take things in stride.