A long awaited day!

Today was the day that I've been looking forward to for many years!  We finally started construction of the Trainbarn, here at our property Whistlestop!  The site has been ready for quite some time and last week I marked out the outline of the slab and verandah with flouro marking paint.  Today the mini-excavator arrived and made very light work of removing all the grass and topsoil from the site, removing a tree stump, and digging out the trenches for the block-wall footings.  Here are a couple of photos before all the action started.

I love watching these highly-skilled operators use these machines, it's like they're part of the machine!  The first thing he did was put a pick-like attachment on to rip up all the broken surface rock.  Following that he dug out the block-wall footing trenches.

Here is a photo of the site all ready for the next step, which is bringing in lots of clean fill to build the pad for the slab up to the required level.  I didn't want the slab right on the ground like a normal shed, I want to be able to step up onto it.

So, tomorrow is Bobcat and dump-truck day, bringing in and compacting the fill, then levelling it all out.  After that we'll let it settle for a few days.  Then the concrete-pouring starts, hopefully early next week.

I've waited a long time for this!  I'm sure there will be many 'milestones' along the way, but today was most certainly one of them!