They made short work of a long wall.

Warm weather again for this weekend and we actually got a sunny day to visit the site.  We were greeted with the driveway lined with large boulders but the driveway itself was clear of obstacles.  Many of the deep ruts in the driveway that were filled in with the recycled concrete have been smoothed out so it looks like Great Oaks also leveled it a bit.

   There are more boulders at the front of the site than there were last week.  I think this is all that's needed for the street retaining wall.  I've been coordinating between the building crew and Great Oaks since the roof trusses are ready to be delivered.  We've decided that Great Oaks can finish the walls near the house and delay the delivery of the trusses until next Friday.  I'm told that we'll need every available flat surface to store the trusses on since the roof design is so complex.  Matt says that they'll need to move the trusses back to the site with the skytrack and probably use the crane to move them over the house to the back yard for storage.  At least after the walls are done, there will be more usable space in front of the house for large machinery.

   Because of the thaw, the driveway was a bit soft in some places, but the deep ruts were leveled or filled so it's mostly walkable.  I could have probably driven back, but I don't want to risk getting stuck or puncturing a tire.  Immediately visible is the lack of large stones that used to line the drive.  It looks like they've used almost every piece for the wall.

   And what a wall it turned out to be!  I'd say it's probably 90% complete.  It looks like they need to finish off the top course but most of the wall is completed.  Many of the stones look like they've been cut to form the curves in the wall.  You can also see that they deviated from the original plan by connecting the main wall to the small wall around the pine trees.  The result is awesome.

   You can see there's still some work to complete on the right.  I think the land will naturally grade down so I think the wall will step down similar to what you see here.  The visible landscape fabric is folded over the wall and the top course is placed to hold it down.   As it is, there's one stone on the final course and it's a full stone higher than current grade.

   Great Oaks and Matt communicated to determine how the exterior granite cobble would be attached to the basement walls so they could cleanly mesh the landscaping stones to the house.  Looking at the ICF courses, you can see the total height of the wall is about eight feet.  

   You can see how the Rosetta stone stairs cut through the wall.  There will be plantings on top of the lower wall, but I'm not sure how they'll be watered.  The beds up there are pretty isolated so I'm not sure how irrigation will be able to run up there.  Something to discuss with Great Oaks I guess.

   These steps are great.  Each step is a standard height which makes climbing them comfortable.  The color matches very well with the caramel mint stone but you can still tell that they're a concrete product.  It's unfortunate that there was some damage to the lowest step, so I'll ask Great Oaks how they'll address that.  Since it's a concrete product, I think they can just use a construction glue to fix it.  That's part of the perils of using a man made product.  Another disadvantage of using a concrete product is that if a chunk does break off, you can see that the "inside' is concrete.  If you use a natural stone, then it's just stone inside.

   Looking down the steps.  I'm not sure what's going in the flat space between the steps.  We might put stone slabs or crushed concrete, whatever looks better.  I believe the rock on the right is the top course so one more is needed on the left to bright the wall to height.

  Here's where the implementation deviated from the design.  In the design, there was supposed to be a break in between these walls but there probably wasn't enough space to implement the slope.  It could have been that the grade was too high and would have made too great a slope.  Whatever the reason, we really like the changes.  

   Here's the whole wall again.  I think the curved area will all be a mulched bed, but I don't think there will be any other plantings in it.  The rest of this area will be grass... someday

   They moved some of the boulders close to where the boulder retaining wall will connect to the concrete wall.  These boulders are the largest of the lot, some of them measuring more than three feet across.  The plan is to finish this retaining wall as well, buy Wednesday, so there will be enough space for the truss crane.  We'll need so much fill dirt up here to bring it to grade.  

   Here's another shot, standing where the stairs are.  It's a good shot of one of the planing areas on the wall.  I guess there's a maximum height a wall can be, before you need some kind of safety fence.  these walls were designed to be below that height so we won't need a railing here.  There will be a railing on top of the concrete wall since it's eight feet higher than the grade below.

   Here's a close up of the damage to the bottom step.  Probably not a big deal, plus, I'm not sure how they would replace it since it's sitting under the step above it,  Even if they use a construction adhesive to glue it back together, there will probably still be at least a hairline crack in the stone.

   Final shot of the house before the walls are done and the trusses are delivered.  Soon the sky will be filled with roofline,

   We also got the chance to visit Hardware Door and Bevel to place our order for the front door, mudrroom exterior door, and great room door.  The whole operation is really impressive.  They specialize in custom entry doors, making any dimension and style you want.  We've decided to go with an eight foot solid mahogany front door with 14" side lights on each side.  The sidelights will have leaded glass thermopaned between two pieces of glass.  We still need to decide on the leaded glass design, but they make it on site in their workshop.  They also come to the build site to measure and install a temporary door and frame the exterior finishers can build right up to.  Check that item off the list.