Construction Begins A Frame BEDROOM WING BUILD Removing 4 000 Cu ft Of Dirt

We have officially broken ground on phase two of our A-frame home build. Three feet right there, probably about two feet here, a foot over there. We're rocking and rolling. This week we're focusing on getting the house pad dug out for the bedroom laying in preparation for pouring the footer. So the footers will come off about one foot forward this way and the two-foot footer that comes down. We have a massive amount of dirt to move and only the two of us to get the job done. I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm a little bit nervous about operating that bobcat on my own and maneuvering all of the dirt from the build site. Today I'm digging out the house pad for the bedroom wing. And as you guys know, the house is built on kind of a slope. So our house comes off like this. And we did that when we did the silent tubes and we didn't have to do much grading. But now since we're building the back of the house, the dirt's right here. We can't build the back like this because part of the house would be in the dirt. So we got to take all this extra dirt and take it out of here. So the elevation we're going to go off of is going to be over there next to the house. So we're going to have a small crawl space. The first thing we're going to do is take a piece of rebar, bang a piece of rebar into the ground. That's going to be our point of elevation. The next thing we're going to do, we'll go through and shoot the grade and pretty much mark down on the ground how much dirt needs to be removed in that location. Perfect. We got a lot of cutting to do. Two foot right here, three feet right there, probably around two feet here, a foot over there. So we got a lot of dirt to pull out and to move it that way. So let's get going. You doing all right? Oh, I hope. Does he like the leaves? Yeah. Good. So we are dealing with a bit of a situation with one of our turkeys. This turkey is not one of the batches of turkeys that's being raised for meat, but it's actually become a pet. Haiti calls him Turk. So we noticed that he was limping and we kind of just kept an eye on him for a couple of days because it, you know, it happens time to time. Somebody steps on something and they get hurt. But it can progress into a bigger problem if they actually cut their foot or they got a splinter and it turns into an infection, bumblefoot, something like that. So he started not walking enough. He was sitting down. He's part of the like the duck family. He's one of that crew that walks around with everybody and he was no longer able to keep up with them. So we decided to try and treat his foot as best we can. The best course of action for us is to soak his foot in some warm water for about 15 minutes with some Epsom salt. And then we're going to get it all cleaned up. We're going to put some spray on it and we are going to wrap it all up to keep it nice and clean. I'll be going through and changing the dressing on his foot every couple of days, hoping that it heals. And we're going to be keeping him up here on our front porch in like a large dog crate that we have, giving him some good food. Ellie picked out some yummy stuff for him. She got him some scrambled eggs. And did you put crackers on there? Yes. So he's going to be eating well. He is eating and drinking. And at this point, we just, you know, fingers crossed that his foot heals and he can get back out there. Yeah, I hope you have a good night sleep. Here buddy. Here. Some eggshells. He didn't want my eggs. He likes them. They're tasty. Yeah, he's so cute. Right? Yeah. That laser in there, girls, threw a rat. Probably went a little too loud. But that matters. That's good, girl. Mark with an X. A little loud, that's fine. As Josh works on getting everything dug out, I'm going to hop in the holes occasionally and check grades so that he knows where we're good at, where we need to dig more out. And then I'm going to go ahead and mark it so that we can move down the line and get everything dug out. As we're going through this process, we're seeing how much dirt we're pulling out. And I guess we're kind of trying to figure out whether we want to pull it all out and put it to the side and deal with it later. Or if we want him to be digging it out and me to be moving it with the Bobcat as we go along. It's probably going to be more efficient doing it that way. But I'd be lying if I didn't say I'm a little bit nervous about operating that Bobcat on my own and maneuvering all of the dirt from the build site to wherever else we're going to put it on. Do you think you can take care of that? I don't know. You're going to have to show me what to do. It's not hard, it's very easy. I'm just nervous for you. I'm nervous for me too. I need some speed too. I know. Because this thing digs fast. I got to be able to keep up with you. Yeah, what's going to happen then, I'll just start digging and I'll turn and I'm not going to move anywhere. I'm going to turn and I'm going to reach out and dump it and just cover all that and come back. But I'm going to be making a pile, a mountain of the dirt. What we need is 10 dump trucks in a row, I can start filling them all up. I don't have that option. You got me, I'm your option. There you go. Good money management has always been a priority for us. It's what has allowed us to save and meet our financial goals to do things like build our own home and invest in other properties. Rocket Money is an all-in-one personal finance platform that has helped us save more and spend less and they're also the sponsor of today's video. We all know that budgeting is a huge part of financial success. We also know it can be a real struggle. 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To try it out for free and unlock more features with Premium, head to the link in the video description below or go to rocketmoney.com slash wildwonderful off-grid. Now let's get back to the build. I'm definitely super proud of her trying new things, you know. If I had to be failed, there's too much dirt. But before you know it, she'll get the hang of it and she's gonna be rocking and rolling. There she goes, she's sped it up a little bit. She'll be rocking and rolling before you know it. Get her, girl! Not all year, okay? I gotta get used to it first, Josh. If you need to, let's turn the throttle all the way up. All right. Get back all the way forward. As you go in there, put this bucket down. You have to skim the dirt on the ground. Then ram it right into the side of the dirt. You know, get a big old scoop. You pull that thing back and you shake it a little bit and pull back a bit. Do a 360. You go that way, dump it, come back to the same thing. The frog has to be turned all the way up to the top, though. Let's do that. All right, so I got probably about a quarter of the pad dug out right now. I'm telling you, that's a lot of dirt. A lot more than we thought it was gonna be. The section that I was digging at took about two and a half feet. Two, two and a half feet out. Next section we're gonna move to, it's further back up. So it's gonna be around three and a half feet. We're digging around the house, a big area. It's just gonna be enough so we can get the footers in there, build the concrete walls up, and then we'll backfill around there. Pretty much after we get everything poured, we'll backfill and then slope everything away from the house, I think. We changed it up just a little bit, but I wish I had five or six dump trucks right behind me. I could fill it up. It makes my life a lot easier. But Erin's pulling away, though. You're doing a great job. I'm super proud of you, babe. You're amazing. Brownie points, guys, you know? It took me a little while to get used to everything, but I'm finally feeling like I'm comfortable with what I'm doing and I've gotten more fluent in the controls. At first, I was having to think a lot about what my hands were doing. And then after a little while, I realized that I really wasn't thinking that much. My hands were just doing what they needed to do. So I still get caught off a little bit when I bump and I start to tip. It's always something that I'm super nervous about. But yeah, I mean, I guess it's going okay. We're making progress. Going through marking everything. All the pink marks are grayed. So we're a little bit low or pretty close. We're not high anywhere. Everywhere we're high, I'm getting back in the machine and pulling a little bit more out. It's all shale, so it's kind of part in clumps. It's not good soil here. It's all shale, like I said. Once we get this entire pad dug out, I'm going to come through here with the skid steer and back drag and pull and smooth everything down as nice as I can with the skid steer itself. And once that's done, we'll get the small excavator in here and we're going to dig over footers in. So we're rocking and rolling. I'm getting further along. I got to put my drawing out and see exactly where I'm going to be at on the side of the house. I think I'm probably far enough back. We'll see. But I'm going to go up front now and start taking the rest of this stuff out and pulling everything out. It's a lot of dirt, guys. I said it again. It's a lot of dirt. But one thing I am proud of though is Erin. She's crushing it. So when you first operate that thing, you have obviously two hands. Forward, back, left and right. And you get your one hand, raise a bucket up and down and left and right. Tilt it. So her getting there and not doing it before, she's struggling a little bit. But like I said, it's all muscle memory. So you get on for a few minutes, you get the hang of it. And she got the hang of it pretty quickly. So she's doing fantastic. Super proud of her. Oh, it's so cute. It's such a nice deer. He's not even afraid of us. Yeah, it's so cute. Every day he comes. He's so nice. He's friendly. So this is the back of the house right there. That's the deck portion. That's the back wall. So the footers will come off about one foot forward this way. And it's a two foot footer that comes down about 20 feet off the house. About 10 feet off the house this way. This entire footer right there is for the safe room. That entire thing is going to be concrete from the ground up. So where the house is going to sit at, I got roughly about four to five feet off the footer of open space that I cut out. So when we pour the footer itself, we can easily go through there, form the walls up and pour those in concrete too. And then we can waterproof the side of the footer wall. So we actually dug everything out kind of like that. So it gives some extra working space around the footer itself when we start doing the walls.