BETHEL — It’s a curious sight after dark: lights glowing from a raised house on Paradise Road.

On a recent morning, Mike Kelly, a contractor from Rumford, is working in the hole of the newly dug foundation, now four feet deeper than before. From his workspace a glance upward reveals another hole, this one offering a view of part of the house’s first floor.

Though Kelly has never read Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, he can relate to the fictional “Mike.” Like him, Kelly spends some of his days digging foundations – usually two or three a year. This one, however, he admits, has been a tough one.

When Kelly hears that “Mary Anne,” the steam shovel in the book, is left behind to become a furnace when Mike Mulligan’s work is done, he nods knowingly. Kelly, however, uses a smaller excavator, which can climb out of the hole up a snowy ramp at the end of each day.

By now, Kelly’s excavator has moved hundreds of rocks and boulders on the property. They are piled around the house, adding to the curious scene. Of the cumbersome removal task, he says, “You drag them out, and you don’t take a lot at once.”

Cold work

Tiny icicles are stuck in Kelly’s mustache. His dog, “Puppy,” looks for a sunny spot on this 27-degree morning – a balmy day compared to the single-digit temperatures of previous days.

“You can only do this job in the winter,” says Kelly. Why? Because the stone and clay that surround the foundation create what is his biggest challenge, muck.

“At 50 degrees [the muck] will come oozing out,” he says. ”It would float away.”

He explains that water flows down Paradise Hill creating a very high water table at the base of the hill.

When homeowner Lucy Abbott, of Bethel learned the sills were rotting she decided it was time to undertake the work needed to save the house.  In the meantime, her neighbor Jimmy Smith has graciously offered to detour the cross country ski path used by Crescent Park students into his yard during construction.

Would a “knock down” require a new foundation, too? “Yes,” responds Kelly, “but, it would be a lot easier without the house in the way.”

While this project hasn’t been easy, he recalled another more challenging one where they had to run a rod through the first floor windows to lift the house because the tar-papered first floor was water damaged.

Kelly said he learned his trade while attending Region 9 School of Applied Technology. All four of his children are Region 9 graduates, too. “It’s the best thing in the whole world,” says Kelly of the Mexico technical school where he learned construction.

Asked what objects he has found in foundations, he responds, “just beer bottles, lots of beer bottles.” However,  at a nearby Bethel home in an upper level room, he found Civil War letters plastered to the walls with white wash. Back then, they used paper to insulate until they had the money for something more effective, he explains.

Encircling the inside and outside perimeter of the new stone foundation of the Paradise house is crushed stone with pipes leading to the new sump pump.

From here on out, the sump pump will run continuously, keeping the basement dry. How do they line the sump pump hole?

With rocks, lots of rocks, says Kelly.