Site prep work

With the driveway completed to the top of the hill in the fall of 2011, 2012 was spent clearing out more of the firewood that was left, and doing some final tree cutting for things like the septic area.  By fall  2012, that was all done and I wanted to move ahead with getting the site rough graded, and the rest of the stumps dug out.  I also wanted to get the large retaining wall in place ahead of time.  Because the lot is rather steeply sloped, we needed to cut into the hill a decent amount to make a flat spot.  That was going to require a massive retaining wall, and we wanted to use natural stone given how prominent it would be.

Here you can see the cut into the hill.  We broke up the wall into a 2-tiered terraced setup to keep it from looking too massive.   You can see the cut into the hill if you look closely down the line a bit (look for the orange flags).

And an overall look at the site with the hill cut on the right and the pad generally flattened out.  He stripped off the topsoil and piled it in 2 large piles - at the left, and way in the back.  Those will get spread back around for topsoil later.