FOUNDATION!! That is a whole lot of concrete. The basement walls are 9 feet high in the basement. We will have a walk-out into the backyard and side yard. The landscape in Pittsburgh is like nothing I have ever seen. There are so many hills here that you almost never find a flat lot. So as we began digging found that we needed to add a retaining wall to hold up the backyard - that was fun! The builder poured it along with the foundation and will brick the front, so it will look like a natural extension of the house.