The Ground Is Broken

It's finally begun. On a sort of whim on Monday, Trev and I decided to go for it and take the first step towards the long waited for deck that we have been diligently saving up for. We went out and rented a jack-hammer to to bust up the concrete pad that needed to go. Neither Trevor or I had ever used one and we sure enjoyed it. The hammer was quite heavy but we traded off and on and managed to get the whole job done in under 2 hours.

Here is our official before shot.......

Making the first few breaks.........I think I may have found my life calling, I had SO much fun with this thing.

Our dear and beautiful boy just sat at the screen door all day watching and sleeping in the sun......he's gotten so big!

Trev's turn........once we got closer to the house the slab got weaker and just start cracking off all on it's own. Made things easier for us!
Much to Trevor's sheer dread, we found this very hairy little fellow under one of the hunks of concrete that came up. It was about three-quarters the size of my palm.
All done with the hammer......we had to wait for my dad to show up with the utility trailer before we could clean out the concrete. My dad brought my youngest brother Ryan with him and they managed to get the chunks and all of the surface level pea-gravel and dirt shoveled out in just a few hours. My other young brother Kevin came over a little later and I cooked everyone stir-fry.
This ones a little dark but we had my dad, brother Kevin and Trevor's co-workers Bodie and Kevin help Trev and I a few days later. After our work earlier in the week we still needed to dig down another 4-5 inches in order to make the deck good and sturdy. After almost a couple hours we got half done and called it a night. We have SUCH great friends and family. Many bodies make the load light and keep the budget down :)
My dear ol' dad taking a water break
No date set for the next digging party but it feels so great to have come this far in such a short amount of time. We've been making our way around to the different building centers in town buying them all out of their 4-way deck blocks and so far we've got 20 and are going to need 10 or so more.
I will keep updating as our adventures in our first big renovation continue!