Here we go again

The summer after we moved into this house, our neighbors across the street began the process of finishing their basement and putting an addition on their house. Because their basement had some water issues (unlike mine, which should be labeled on local maps as a flood plain), they did the all-out waterproofing job on it ... excavating a trench around the house, putting in new drainage around the walls, coating the outside of the walls with waterproof stuff, etc. I'd say the waterproofing alone probably set them back 20 or 30 thousand dollars.

Because of weather delays, a project that kept hitting snags and unexpected problems (such as, hooking their drainage up to an existing line made sewage back up into their next door neighbors' bathtubs. Oops.), a project that just kept getting bigger (ooh, let's add a two car garage while we've got everything torn up!), and various contractor issues, their remodeling went on for TWO YEARS.

Two years of them having a 10-foot-deep hole somewhere in their yard. Months of having an 8-foot-high pile of gravel in their front yard. Two years of me having to drive around excavators, dump trucks, flatbed trucks, slate delivery trucks, etc. to get out of my driveway. Two years of their three kids tracking every bit of dirt in the world into their house, necessitating several months of floor refinishing once the project was done. Not that it bothered US - every morning I'd guess which equipment would be parked in front of their house. We should have started a neighborhood pool to predict when they would be done, but I don't think any of us would have guessed it would go on that long.

Anyway, when I went to drop Liza off at preschool this morning, there was a backhoe parked in front of another neighbor's house. Backhoes never mean good things, at least in this neighborhood. Either they're next on the list of "houses that really need to have their sewer lines replaced," or they're starting some fairly large construction/demolition project. It will be interesting to see which it turns out to be. Now where's the pool sheet I drew up? I've got my eye on a completion date of summer 2007, whatever the project is.