A bobcat in our backyard

Today, April 8th, was a big day. At 8am the crew showed up, as promised. Our neighbor ran out with questions about what was going to happen. Michael, the crew manager, pampered her right away with nice voice and a business card asking to call whenever she feels uncomfortable (note: apparently you do not need to get neighbors' permission to do remodeling, only city or county permission). The guys removed a part of our fence, and a bobcat started to navigate through our backyard. I could not imagine how fast everything that used to be grass could disappear. In minutes no more grass was left from this wild, but cute animal's jaws. I could not understand how they will know where to excavate the pool, because all the drawing from the day before yesterday disappeared. Michael told us not to worry, that the bobcat will first level the ground, and then the pool will be re-drawn and marked using wooden boards. As I wrote yesterday, we wanted to change the shape of the pool a little bit. Philippe edited the lines and e-mailed the new drawing to Michael yesterday night. Today, however, when it was time to mark the pool, Michael was not there, and Philippe noticed that it was being done according to the old design. He went outside and corrected the mistake. I was about to get upset as to how come the crew manager could let this happen. However, minutes later Michael called his crew and told to stop doing anything till he is back, because the pool design was different than what they think. That was a relief for me, as I did not want to realize that we could not trust our contractor. Soon after, the pool was marked all over the place with metal strings and wooden boards. Once we confirmed we liked what we saw, the excavation started. The bobcat was running back and forward, removing soil and taking it to the truck outside of our fence. I also need to say that the guys put plywood on the pavers we have in front of the fence, and also our contract says, that should pavers become ruined or misplaced, they will fix them up. The underlying layer of the soil appeared to be clay, most probably because we have a creek right behind the backyard. Mike says it is the most complicated type to work with for them, because water is coming. But it is not a stopper. Several concrete panels were found during excavation. Mike called the concrete removal guys to break those down. That team showed up right away. By 4PM our pool, together with the hot tub (did I even mention there would be a hot tub as well?), were excavated almost completely. The crew will come tomorrow at 9am to finish.

During excavation we realized that our current irrigation system is going in the middle of the backyard, and thus the pipes got broken. This is not a big deal, though for some time we will have to water our front yard manually. For the rest - no complaints so far. Fingers crossed!