Concrete 1; Us 0

July 2012

We were so impressed with how quick and easy the back porch cover went up that we didn't fully estimate how much work we still had to do.  We were really only about 1/5th of the way into the project.  Our next step was to remove the remaining concrete that surrounded the porch that we longer wanted or needed.  

We had cut the concrete back in May when we depaved the driveway, but due to the unexpected depth, we realized we would not be able to remove the pieces in slab form and would instead need to break them up further with a jack hammer.  I was honestly dreading this part more than anything.  We had spent three weekends already jack hammering and moving large concrete pieces around.  I had breathed a sigh of relief when they removed the dumpster a month earlier.  Now here I was again.

 The good news was that the weather was much better.  Also, our friend let us borrow a jack hammer so we did not have any additional costs.  Since Josh was a pro at it we devised a system where he jack hammered a section for about 5 minutes and then took a ten minute break while I picked up the pieces and carried them to a tarp in our backyard.  This would be the THIRD tarp in our backyard filled with debris.  Urgh. 

This system worked great and most of the concrete came up pretty easy.  Within one morning session we had successfully removed all the remaining concrete. Hurray.  Unfortunately, we were now left with a dirt wasteland from our car to the porch and a very intimidating concrete pile.  Honestly, I cannot imagine how much our neighbors hated our Saturday concrete removal.

 

With the big equipment spent, we ordered more Western Red Cedar from the same guy who got us the wood for the front yard raised beds.  Our goal was for them to look as identical as possible.  We also had a bunch of left over wood we were excited to use up and get out of our garage.  While we waited for the wood to be delivered.  Josh leveled the area where they new raised beds would go.   He used some of our broken concrete pieces to act as a sturdy foundation and we spread pea gravel over the area to help make sure the wood would not be sitting directly on the wet earth.

This picture makes it look like we are building a fortification structure around our patio. Apparently we needed to ward off a Garden Gnome attack.

 

 

By the end of the weekend there was not much to show for our hard work except more piles.  But freeing up all that soil for more planting space felt great and we were excited to move forward with the raised beds. 

Depave Chain Gang

May 2012

The weekend of our Depave, Josh and I took the Friday before off and worked to pre-cut the concrete, prepare the house and ready our yards for the work.  Everyone showed up on a chilly Saturday and we spent the first part of the morning explaining how and why we depave.  We were the experts, we then gave everyone a trial on the concrete saw.  It was about this time that we started realizing the concrete was thicker then we thought.

We had assumed for about 2-3 inches thick, which is standard for non-structural walkways and driveways.  It turned out our concrete had not been poured on an even surface.  They poured the concrete unevenly onto rock. In some areas it was 6 inches thick.  It was rough.  We had to rent a jack hammer and our volunteers diligently worked with pry bars, jack hammers, and sledge hammers to remove the concrete. In many ways it looked less like a workshop and more like a chain gang.  We had 30 people working their butts off and we were making progress at a back breaking snail's pace.

The good news, everyone was amazing! Hard working and determined to at least get our driveway strip completed before the end of the day.  When they left we were had only removed about 250 sqft of the 1500 sqft we had planned.  But the bigger issue was that the slabs of concrete did not come out as slabs.  Since we used the jack hammer and sledgehammers, we had made rubble.  Josh and I had originally planned to use the nicely cut concrete slabs as stepping stones, we had no use for the rubble.  So in the short term we dumped all the concrete on our patio and ordered up a dumpster for us to recycle it.  Here is a great picture of our rubble pile at night from the kitchen.  We joked our back yard now had a 'derelict" look to it, a la Zoolander. Nothing like turning your backyard into a third world war zone to really spruce up your curb appeal.

On Sunday, we decided to divide and conquer.  Josh continued to jack hammer the strip and areas along our patio, while my neighbor Mary and I came out and dug out the drive way strip.  We added new soil, planted our ground cover and installed a pea gravel top.  I felt a little better by the end of the day. But we had only done about 1/8th of the work we had hoped to achieve.  This was the first real 'what were we thinking' project and we knew we had about 4 weekends worth of work to go. Gulp.