"Have You Found China Yet?"

So, looking at this picture, you may wonder why we've accumulated such a extensive pile of dirt at the side of the house over the past two months (and this is only a small portion of it). The simple answer, as I explained to Lilly when she asked me that exact question, is, "Mom told me to."

Here's the hole all that dirt came out of -- dug by hand, shovelful by laborious shovelful, 99% by yours truly (Isaac contributed maybe 2/3% and Ethan maybe another 1/3%). My neighbor, Dave, who has watched me with amusement as I've labored over the weeks, keeps asking me if I've found China yet. Hardy har har.

And the reason why the big hole? I'm finishing the basement, and to make it a bona fide living space, one has to install an egress window. Annie figured, as long as you're going to dig a window well for that egress window, why don't we make a really big window well that'll let in lots of light? And, while you're at it, if you're going to install one egress window, why not two? (More on that in a second.) The red lines below outline the approximate size of the enlarged window (4x4 ft.):

To meet the requirements of an egress window, it has to be a certain size. We picked 4x4 horizontal sliding windows. To install a 4 ft window, one has to dig a hole that's at least a foot deeper for drainage and whatnot, so the hole is 5 ft deep. Because of there'll eventually be two windows installed more or less side by side, I ended up digging one long trench for both of them - 20 ft long. Building codes dictate that the finished window well be at least 3 ft wide at its base, with a ladder or terraced steps built in for easy escape. Annie wants terraces, which I'll get to after the windows are installed. As it is, the walls slope upwards and outwards from 3 ft at the bottom to 6 feet on top, so, an average of 4.5 ft wide. So that makes it a 4.5 x 20 x 5 ft hole, or 450 cubic feet (16 2/3 cubic yards) of packed clay -- of roughly 250 wheelbarrows full of clay. Ouch.

Here are the boys standing in the hole for reference:

The boys wanted pictures of themselves sitting on the edge of the hole -- what fine-looking children! (Isaac was bitten by some kind of insect two days before this photo -- hence the swollen right eyelid.)

Here they are again!

I'll get more photos up when the windows are being installed!