Today, Scott got the cistern back into its hole!

After digging it out with the excavator, he had to tarp it for a week while he worked his job. He successfully kept it dry through a torrential storm. Today he ordered gravel and tamped a few inches down at the bottom of the hole. Then he used a winch, ropes, trees, and his truck to scooch the cistern toward the hole and lower it down.

Here it is in front of the house where you can get a better appreciation for its scale.

Here are pictures of the progress getting the cistern back into the  hole. Oh, Scott cleaned the inside of the cistern out well last week and today I went in and sprayed it down with bleach and wiped it down.

I came out and worked for about 3 hours while Scott was working on the cistern. I cleaned up the inside and organized his tools. Of course, I made a fire and burned wood cutoffs and brush that had fallen around the yard. 

Over the winter, the cistern rose out of the ground. One pipe broke there, but no other plumbing seems damaged. (Incidentally, the guy who delivers the water said this happens "all the time," and to avoid it the most important thing is to keep the cistern full of water.)

It's been much too wet in the hole to do anything about it all summer. But recently, the weather has been dry, and it finally seemed a good time to get the cistern back underground.

Scott went out one day and used the shovel to move as much dirt off the cistern as he could. The next day he drove the excavator he had rented out to the property and managed to use it to pull the cistern out of the hole. He said it pushed the excavator to the limit. 

After getting the cistern out, he moved it out of the way and on to its side. He used the excavator to dig the hole deeper.

The cistern has gotten very dirty on the inside, unfortunately, and it must be cleaned before it goes back into the ground. A bit harder to do with no running water!

On Tuesday, Scott started the siding on the other side of the chimney. He has to work around a lot of things on that wall like electrical boxes.

On Monday, Scott finished siding to the left of the chimney, finished the soffit above it, and covered the water-table boards on that side of the house.

On Saturday, Scott got about halfway up the other back side of the house flanking the sunroom. He also did the soffit there.

On Sunday, he finished that side.

On Tuesday, Scott finished the siding on the nature-preserve side of the house facing the river, and he did the soffit above it. 

On Sunday, Scott removed the old decks that were on the side and front of the house. We had always planned on redoing them, but I think he had to do it now so he would be able to do the siding on those sides of the house.

Then he spent the rest of the day replacing rotted wood on the water-table boards that sit on top of the concrete footer and some joists. 

On Monday, he left in the morning, stopped and got siding supplies, then started the prep work and siding on another side of the house.

I got there about 3. My main job was to burn the deck wood. Before I did it, I wanted to swap out this nice metal fire ring we got from his dad for the cinder blocks that have made the fire pit up until now. 

Scott said if I was going to do that, I could take the mini sledge and smash the cinder blocks into bits to fill holes in the driveway.  The picture below is the last pile of the blocks I had left before I thought to take a picture.

After the new upper-floor windows were installed and the bathroom window on the first floor was removed, the remaining kitchen window on the lower floor looked strange and noticeably off-center.

So Scott moved it.

It took him a day to do it. First he cut out the window and a space for the new location. He had to cut pipes that he'll have to redo later.

Then he framed in the new window.

Then he installed the new window. This placement will also give us space between the sink and the door where we can put cabinets above and below the counter.

Later he'll redo the porch with some columns, so I Photoshopped this photo of what it might look like.

Scott finished the siding on the final wall of the sunroom. Then he cut the grass.

On Saturday, Scott finished the river-side wall of the sunroom siding. Then he started the nature-preserve side . It took him all day because the surface prep is time consuming and the double-sided angles he had to cut on the siding for the peak was slow going.

I removed drywall, cleaned, and burnt some wood. The remaining drywall to remove included the office ceiling and some remnants higher up in the living room, office, and sunroom for which I needed a better ladder than I had when I first started that job. I got the sunroom down to studs except for a bit of board at the peak that I couldn't reach.

N0w Scott can wire everything easily and we can have fresh new drywall.