As I crawled out of bed this morning I felt my age, especially when I realized that the creaking sound was not the bed but me. People tell me it is time in life for me to slow down, but it so much fun working out in the sun all day. I love the feel of tools in my hands and the sound of a diesel engine as we use the tractor.
Yesterday, Tuesday, we removed the rest of the old sidewalk; except for one piece. There was so much concrete in it that we couldn’t even wiggle it. We added the sidewalk to the scrap pile, which you can see from the above picture, is getting very large. We still have brick from two sides of the house to dump there yet. We have a contractor lined up who wants the pile for hard fill.
There were two front doors to this house and each had a thick slab at the end of the stairs. Why the builder did that is a mystery to me because it was not needed. The first one we were able to get out and we have seen it several times in previous blog entries. This one was next to the basement wall and did not allow us to put any leverage behind it. We broke the point off and will leave the rest and cover it up with eight inches of soil and they will work the landscaping around it. We also laid forms along the house to place concrete on the brick edge to seal the wall.
We next dug out the scrubs, added eight inches of soil along the side of the garage and replanted the scrubs. I will do some more finish grading today.
Next, I laid out the deck and we used the backhoe to dig holes for the posts. Up here in western New York we have to dig down 48 inches, to get below frost line, and pour a concrete pad for the post to sit on. When you have a backhoe available it is easy to move soil out of the way and then when you are done you backfill. There will be three posts in this trench because of the stairway off the deck. We will finish the forms for the pads under the posts on Thursday.
On Wednesdays and Fridays, David works on another job and so today I will work alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment