When I started the excavation I assumed I would come up short on dirt. I was removing an enormous volume dead space where the water had once been. It seemed as though that volume would need to be made up somewhere. I was wrong; there was always more dirt than I imagined. This phase of the project involved weeks of shifting drifts of dirt and sand around my yard.
The trickiest piece was to excavate yard after yard of material without giving the neighborhood a clue that I was in the midst of a major renovation. Thank you Craigs List. Over the following weeks and months small groups of eager homeowners would descend on my property to haul away my problem bucket by bucket - and sometimes by the truck load. As the drifts subsided I began preparations for phase 2: clearing the site for the first concrete pour - the foundation of the inner RECESS.
