Recycling the Old Foundation

The new view from the porch of the rubble that was once the Delaney House's foundation

Today, HIlary brought his bobcat to 62nd Street, and after much work, the old foundation is mostly gone.

Because the house had a brick foundation, we thought that removing the foundation would be easy - we could practically pick it up, piece by piece. But in fact, although the perimeter foundation was brick capped with concrete, the central slab was almost a foot thick in places.

Hilary breaking up concrete with the bobcat

Hilary and Tom spent the day breaking up the concrete and loading two dumpster loads to be taken away. It's still not done - on Monday, Hilary will return to haul off the rest of the pieces and to break up the area that was under the front room. The concrete that was our foundation gets ground up and recycled as aggregate for new concrete projects.

With rain in the forecast, we expect that the new large front yard on 62nd Street will soon become a mud pit, so we'll be going back tomorrow to cover the gaping hole in our yard with plastic.

Next, the surveyors come back to site the Cheney Cottage - we're still optimistic that the Cheney Cottage will actually move to 62nd Street.