If you've never witnessed a seasoned CAT operator in action tearing down a clump of trees, you¹ve missed a tremendous spectacle.

The mechanical shovel artist who removed the trees from our lot and dug the hole for the basement delivered a virtuoso performance this week.

He was able to manoevre the massive and powerful CAT with such control that he could gently nudge a tree stump into a dump truck, and pilot around the lot without disturbing any of the trees that we wanted to keep.

His precision was most evident after the hole was dug. He was able to come within a couple of millimetres of the pins outlining our house layout.

Thanks to his artistry, we were able to preserve more trees than we thought we could, maximizing the country oasis effect we were going for.

Not long after, the concrete crew took over and set up the forms for the piles.

A day later, they came in and poured all of the main piles for the basement walls. I'm still amazed at the speed in which they worked - going from a dirt hole to concrete piles in a day.

The next order of business was to set a drainage pattern in the crawlspace around the piles so the water flows into the sump hole in the middle of the dugout.

Once that was completed, a layer of pea gravel was put down over plastic sheeting to ease the water flow to the sump pit.

As I write this, the concrete team was readying the forms to pour the foundation walls in the basement. Once that is done, we'll have a clearer picture of how the footprint of the house will work with the layout of the lot.

Even without the forms, though, it's easy to see that our views out the back will be spectacular. Obviously, it's hard to get an exact idea of what we'll see from specific rooms, but it's very encouraging.

Our next bit of homework involves selecting exterior colours and finishings. We're likely going with a basic brown, three-tab, 25-year rated shingle on the roof. It will work well with the Craftsman theme, and will allow us to bring a dramatic accent colour to the stone work around the columns. We're also thinking about drawing the eye to the front entrance with a dark paint colour on the door.

The stucco will be the knock-down style, and we're likely going with a subdued colour there.

Trimwork around the doors and windows will be white, for simple, clean lines.

It'll be a relief to be done with all of the decisions, and to relax and watch the remainder of the construction process. But we still need to finalize our plumbing-fixture plan - once we get our quotes back we'll be making that decision.

Of course, we've been showing our current home for the past week, and that's taken up a lot of our time and energy. With any luck, we'll have that wrapped up by the time you read this.

The best-case scenario would be to have the buyers of our existing home take possession a couple of weeks after the scheduled possession date of our new home, to allow for unforeseen delays in construction.

It would be comforting to have some leeway so we're not rushing to get out of the house. I can just see unpacking after being rushed - there will be many unrelated (and likely broken items) in assorted boxes throughout the house.

But, I don't even want to think about the moving process yet. I'll be able to write a month's worth of columns on that topic, even though I'll probably be on stress leave by then.