8-26-10
After the excavator operator had backfilled our water cisturn we had him do our finishing touches to our landscaping. 
We asked him to remove a rock that was protruding into the driveway.
  It turned out to be a very big rock. He dug all the way around it and never found the bottom of it. That one is not coming out!
He placed a large flat rock that Doug had found while digging the basement hole.
It took some adjusting to get it the correct depth and to make it level.
Our new back door porch.
He added to the rocks Doug had placed last year.
He lowered the hump in the driveway and sloped it away from the house.
He removed a few trees for our future gazebo spot.
   Although we won't be ready to build the gazebo for quite some time, by developing the area now, it gave us a place to use all the extra rock and dirt from grading the driveway.
This will be the path entrance to the gazebo.
   He did a little touch up on the grading below the cabin to make sure we were sloping away from the basement. Snow melt is an issue that must be planned for.
   9-4-10
We had six loads of gravel delivered. Bruce brought his tractor and spead it around for us.
   After a little hand work around the edges it is finished. It looks like we need two more loads. But first we want to get rid of the big rock in the driveway. Dan has hired a guy to come up Saturday the 11th to blow the top off.
More excavating.......
Sept. 18th

  OK, so we decided that maybe using explosives next to our 420 foot well was a bad idea.

  But we still wanted the rock removed. We hired Steve Kullberg to break it into pieces for us.
Using a shorter bit on his drill, Steve drilled holes all over the face of the rock.
Then he switched to a 3' bit to deepen the holes. His helper Dan plugged the holes with rags to keep the rock and soil out.
Then after a couple of hours of drilling he mixed up a product called Dexpan. He poured it carefully into the holes and stired it with a wire. Then the rock was covered and left to sit. After 24 hours I will go uncover it. I'm told the Dexpan will expand and break the rock into pieces. I will post pictures of this later.
9-20-10
When we uncovered the rock it was cracked in many places.
10-3-10
Bruce moved the pieces with his tractor.
It was going away in pieces.
The pieces were big, but movable.
Removing the broken pieces exposed more of the rock. We will have to do some filling and sculpting of the ground around it to finish the driveway area.
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