I Can See My House from Down Here

As you all know, I bought a house in Orono, Maine on May 1st. I’ll be wrapping up my 12+ years of living in Philadelphia on July 15, at which point I’ll be heading out of Philly and on up to The Pine Tree State, a return to my hometown roots. And I can’t wait!

I’ve enjoyed my years in Philly, especially when it comes to the availability of live music, the access to great restaurants, and for me, the fact that there is such a huge presence of disc golf here.

In the meantime, as I countdown these final days in Philly, the house I bought in Maine, my grandparent’s house, is being worked on. The house needs a foundation. There was a partial foundation under the main living section, but not under the kitchen/hallway section. Plus, there was very little headroom in the old cellar because it wasn’t a deep basement, so you always had to hunch over if you went down there. And the dirt floor sucked!

So, I’m having a foundation put under the entire residence, and with 8 foot basement walls being poured, in addition to a poured basement floor, this will be a basement that eventually becomes finished and usable.

Here are a some pictures of the progress. The top two were taken on Day 1 of the dig, and the bottom one is after 6 days of work. (NOTE: I would've posted a couple more but of course Blogger started acting like a twat and kept giving me server errors during the picture uploads.)

Thanks to my uncle, who lives next door for getting these pictures taken on a nearly-daily basis for me so I can watch my house up there from down here!

I can’t wait to be in my house, in Orono, ME. I left Maine after I graduated high school in 1983. It was actually July when I left the state in 1983. It will be July when I go back this summer, making it 24 years since I’ve lived in Maine (not including my yearly visits). I’ll be going to live in a town with a population of 9,100 people. And I can honestly say that after having lived in a population of 1.5+ million here in Philly for the past 12+ years, I am looking forward to the quiet, the cleanliness, the clean air, the friendlier people, the slower pace of life, the lower cost of living, and not reading about the daily murders that occur here in the City of “Brotherly Love”.

It’s time for a change. Change……here I come!