we are the proud owners of a big hole in the ground.

Not just ANY hole in the ground: OUR hole in the ground. And not just your regular, run of the mill hole in the ground - no, no: we got the special, not-available-in-stores, water-filled hole in the ground! Hooray!

This picture was taken from the north end of the lawn, facing south. See how the middle window is covered in plastic? We never bothered to replace it, because it will be subsumed in the wall of the addition.

The water in question is ground water. Apparently we have a high water table - perhaps because of the boatload of ledge involved. This was news to us. Rather than blow $7,000 to $15,000 on dynamiting it out of the way (as fun as that sounds!), we're scrapping the full basement idea. We'll just have a fully insulated crawlspace, instead. This will mess with The Lovely Clean Lines we had envisioned for the project as a whole...

...because the existing house's bulkhead (which we'd planned on removing, replacing it with a door into the addition's basement), will need to stay. On the bright side, the effort we'd invested to improve said bulkhead (better, insulated door into the basement proper, new roofing - thanks to our friend Michael), won't have gone to waste.

AND, we'll have a trap door into the crawlspace from the floor above it, and I've always wanted a secret trap door.

Always look on the bright side, I say.

Any how. It rained yesterday, and the excavators stayed away - otherwise, the digging would have wrapped up. The foundation guys should be here this week.