Sometimes progress is just a big giant mess

A giant mess with holes and dust and dirt and rusty pipes EVERYWHERE.

I've mentioned before that our basement isn't finished. Well, it just might be by the end of the year!! I've been insanely excited about it. Like when I heard the plumber could move where our water line came into the house, it MADE MY DAY. I told him that about 10 times, too. And while thinking about having the basement finished just gives me happy hives, sometimes the mess does put a bit of a damper on things. Here's what the last few weeks have looked like:

{This is a plumbing mess.}

We were getting two new floor drains (the existing one is in our family room space) and the bathroom fixtures roughed in. It was an entire day full of dust and noise.

Don't worry about the giant pile of dirt that's overtaking the walk up to my front door. I don't. We (which, in this case, is pretty much just my little brother) had to dig window wells so people could come cut giant holes in the foundation of our house with giant saws. Four giant holes, four giant window wells (they had to be dug 4 feet back from the house, a foot on either side of where the cut needed to be made, and 18 inches deeper than the bottom cut).

Dirt was (still is) literally everywhere.

Oh no! The water pipe!

It's cool, just dig down 2 more feet. That's what we needed to do to have the water line entrance moved and still be good to go, code-wise. Small price to pay to have the window be where I wanted it. I could have stood at the bottom of that hole and been buried standing up.

Then they came and cut the big giant holes. You may have picked up from my tone that I was kind of nervous about this, despite the fact that they were ready to go with the steel lintels that would take the weight of the house. It's just... a big giant hole in the load-bearing concrete wall your house is built on. Right? That's scary.

Things were fine, though, and now you can stay tuned for part 2, when progress actually looks like progress.