House built in 1922 with less than 6 ft ceilings. Dug out 100,000 lbs of material and hauled it off in buckets. Took me about 3 months. Now we have 8ft ceilings. Foundation work handled by professional with proper permits.
** progress pics in the replies.



I would put it to you that Horrible Freight buckets are superior to Lowes pails. But I’m not sure I could win that argument thanks to your demonstraion of effort and tenacity.
As someone who owns multiples of both, Harbor Freight buckets are definitely worse than Lowe’s buckets. The Harbor Freight ones never have a flat bottom, which makes it super hard to scrape out all the thinset/hot mud/joint compound/cement/whatever else you’re mixing in a bucket.
That’s a feature, not a bug. Like mixing bowls have a rounded bottom also so it’s easier to mix things in.