Construction begins! (Sorta)

After two years of planning, 18 months of permitting, and a whole lot of drama, pain in the ass, and doubt, we now have our building permit and our contractor is just a few days from starting construction.  Get ready for some heavy duty blogging upcoming!

In the meantime, to save a few dollars, I've taken on the first piece of deconstruction by myself, removing the cinder block retaining wall in the backyard.  The wall was made of around 200 cinder blocks stacked seven high, back by tons and tons of gravel.  While the cinder blocks were not cemented together in any way, they are heavy, and as each row came down, the gravel backing would spill out and require tons and tons of shoveling to clear enough away to get to the next row down.  Here's the progression: