While construction continues 9-5 weekdays, we also hire out additional jobs on weekends. we could do a lot of these ourselves, but we simply don’t have the time. we found someone who is particularly good with masonry, so here’s what he accomplished over the course of two weekends:

*The VIB 2010 was actually Sergey’s doing. Someone, sometime in the future I am sure will wonder, but the house will know)

That is actually a 4-feet deep trough (below ground level)by the back wall of the house. We were having very slight moisture problems in the basement, so we thought we should tackle that before it got worse.

And the following weekend, we decided to fix our chimney indent. With an aim to reuse and recycle as much as we can so we don’t have to go to the dump that one extra time, I cleaned off the brick that Sergey and Kirill took out:

And it went right back into the wall, except without the chimney bump out of course:

Ack, slllooooowwly but surely we are getting there…