Rise of the Machines

 

Because we wouldn't be us without having at least three different jobs underway at once, we paused in our wall-building efforts to move some dirt around outside. We're very keen to start preparing the earth underneath the house so that we can lay a concrete slab underneath. That will mark the very start of the long long process of building in underneath the house. But what excites us more is simply the fact that it will mark the end of the mud puddle that the underneath of our house has been for a year. Hooray!

We were thrilled when a work friend of Tom's work mentioned that he had a bobcat that he would be willing to let us borrow if we threw him some cash and paid for a service for the machine. Considering that these things usually hire for about $500 a day, that sounded like a pretty good deal to us! So we hired a truck (and a driver) to go and collect it, and Tom got to work digging a giant hole in our driveway.

And he moved that dirt underneath the house, to attempt to bring it to some kind of level platform for our future concrete slab.

Allie watched with great interest from a safe distance.

Until Tom decided to give her a go at driving.

She's no stranger to driving heavy machinery. She had a turn at our last house too (see here).

 After a solid day's work, Tom had a very nice-sized hole in the driveway.

It makes us look pretty small!

And then disaster hit.

And here is where we need the collective sigh of dismay.

Clearly we had forgotten! Machines hate us! The machines are out to get us! Did the precious paint sprayer, the possessed first digger, the second borrowed digger, the trilogy of concrete cutters and our pitiful concrete mixer teach us nothing?

Apparently not.

So we snapped an arm on our borrowed bobcat. Fantastic.

Initial enquiries seem to indicate that a new arm would cost over $10,000. Fantastic again.

Our insurance (which has a $2,500 excess mind you) will only cover repairs to machinery that cost less than $10,000, not more than. Fantastic yet again.

There goes our hopes of putting in our slab!

What may be our saving grace is that the guy from whom we borrowed the thing has a son-in-law who's pretty handy with a welder, apparently. He may just be able to save us from rack and ruin and take the problem off our hands.

Fingers crossed, very hard!