Phase Two: Clear the Land

With the old house demolished, it was time to clear the land where the new house would sit. This phase of work consisted of hauling away a massive amount of junk and debris that had accumulated on this patch of land over the past 60 years. It also involved clearing out about 14 smaller trees of assorted varieties that included a couple of pecan trees and what I suspect was a very large oleander tree. Between the junk and the trees, I filled up 14 of those large construction site dumpsters. You can see the dumpsters in some of these shots. This phase took me several months to complete and I got to log a lot of hours running assorted equipment, including two different sizes of track hoes, two different sizes of front end loaders, and a small tractor with bucket and backhoe. I also improvised with my pickup truck and garden tractor from time to time to get one job or another finished. At one point I also had to hire one of those wreckers that hauls semi trucks to come out and pull over some large tree stumps.

Speaking of those tree stumps, that was a sad development. You will see two nice oaks in some of the early photos. These trees were originally going to be in our new backyard. But, a blight that has been killing off my oak trees got these two as well and that ended my grand plans for those trees. So, we decided to punt and backed the house up about 50 feet from our original plan. These trees were not exactly giants, but they were good sized. It took me 16 hours of track hoe time to dig out the root balls around them enough for the wrecker to be able to pull them over. After that it took several weeks of work to cut up those two tree trunks and haul away the debris. The two root balls were a project in and of themselves. In the end these two root balls were too much for the front end loaders I had access to (despite them being medium-sized loaders) and I had to bring in the pros one more time. They drove in one of those large loaders you see on construction sites and tossed the root balls into dumpsters and finished that part of this phase.

A bit of dirt (five loads) and some tractor work to spread it and this phase of the project was done. Completion of all this work meant that house construction could begin. Total time spent to get to this point was roughly nine months. Enjoy the photos!