86'n It

The pouring of the concrete wall went a little something like this:

It was 9pm on Friday night, Marc was supposed to head to Home Depot, get the rest of the wood to complete the form work and more bags of concrete. Mixer would be rented first thing in the morning. Marc sits down and finally figures out how many bags of concrete we would need to do this wall. Calculations reveal it would be 80 bags. Um, that's 4 trips to HD because his truck max carrying load is 20 bags. That's a colossal waste of time.

I start freaking because I've hired someone to come help us. They will be arriving at 9am and I don't want there to be nothing meaningful for them to do. I remember that my contractor/neighbor told me that if you need more than a yard of concrete, it makes sense to call in a truck. I start googling ready-mix concrete in our area. By this time it is 11pm on a Friday night. I call a place trying to hear their recorded message to see if they deliver on Saturday. A woman answers. I'm mortified. She sounds sleepy. Apparently they have the office calls forwarded to their cells. Poor woman. Good new is: they do deliver on Saturday!

I get a call at 7:30am on Saturday morning saying they can deliver at 10:30am. This means that Marc has about 3 hours to complete the form work. Marc does not work fast and starts hustling (and he won't admit it, but freaking out.) Other good news: even with the "short load" delivery fee, the ready-mix concrete from a truck is cheaper than buying 80 bags (not even counting renting the mixer.)

10:30 comes and goes. The concrete guy calls and says he will be late. The hired helper is sweating to death helping me dig a trench and haul gravel for the drains. 11:30 comes and goes. No truck. I call. They will be even later. Marc is happy because he now has more time to complete the form work. The truck finally comes at 2:30! I have to call the helper to come back. (I'm sure he hates me.)

Concrete starts flowing! Oh no, the forms start creaking and buckling. Marc is sweating bullets, but thank you renovation gods, the forms hold. And actually, the deformations look pretty cool. The wall was supposed to be a straight U shape 14" wide and 20" tall (good for sitting). Now it has two angles to it  and bows out to 18" at the top. I like it.

Here is Marc's original elevation sketch of what he wanted the wall to look like:


and here is the real thing:

Please excuse my poorly photoshopped panorama.

Pretty snazzy seat and retaining wall, no?

There is some aggregate showing on the face here, but we both like how it looks.

This weekend, I'll be moving dirt and mulching (!) while Marc parges the white portion of the wall.

Yep. That's the name of my new band and a tribute to getting the dumpster all loaded and taken away!

Honestly, we probably could have filled 2 dumpsters, but Marc wants to salvage the rest of the concrete chunks to use to make a wall on the side of the house. (I think he's high off the success of the first reclaimed concrete wall.) So the yard is not as clean as I'd like, but still much better.

I was not looking better. I was sweating buckets, lifting close to my body weight and getting "dirt mittens". Oh, dirt mittens, I missed you! (Actually, it is more like clean mittens considering my hands are the only clean things.)

We did however get rid of the old rotten railroad ties, our old black-painted plywood countertops (Can you still believe we had those around?), real counter top miscuts #1 & #2 (We gave up on the idea of doing something with these. We have too many projects already.), a huge pile of rotten wood and lath, lots of broken concrete, the old swingset, old rotten lattice, etc. etc.

With the assistance of our hired helper and a huge concrete truck, we actually completed our entire to-do list for this weekend! I dug trenches, hauled gravel, laid pipe (har, har), covered it all up and repeated about 5 times. Marc finished the concrete forms, finished the concrete and then shoveled dirt. Sounds like a grand ole time of a weekend, no?


Marc won't let me take the forms off the front of the new concrete wall because it isn't all the way cured, and let me tell you, the suspense is killing me! (We took the rear forms off to install the trench drains.) We actually woke up an almost napping Franca to put her hand print in the concrete. Check out the photos, cute!

Anyway, here is an update on the list. If all goes well negotiating a price and material with the fence contractor, we can be done this coming weekend (aside from landscaping.) Next weekend/this week will include loading a dumpster, laying flagstones and installing pea gravel! Exciting!!

1. Tear up patio area. (Done!)
2. "Reclaim" stone/concrete pieces to reuse. (Done!)
3. Relocate plants. (Done!)
4. Install gutters (Back is 95% Done!)
5. Bust up concrete "troughs". (Done!)
6. "Reclaim" patio flooring flagstones from garden. (Done!)
7. Mark fence posts. (by contractor)
8. Get samples and select pea gravel. (Done!)
9. Rent equipment. (Done!)
10. Move dirt. (Done!)
11. Dig post holes. (by contractor)
12. Trench for pipe and footing at new site wall and house. (Done!)
13. Pour footing. (Done!)
14. Install metal edging. (Done!)
15. Install site wall reclaimed stone/concrete pieces. (Done!)
16. Place road bond gravel. (Done!)
17. Compact gravel. (Done!)
18. Lay reclaimed flooring flagstones.
19. Install pea gravel.
20. Install trench drains. (Done!)
21. Install fence posts and fence. (by contractor)

Marc and I more or less know what we are planning for the backyard, but it became apparent to me on our  visit-our-families vacation we have made it less then clear to everyone else. So here is it illustrated: (pardon my very quick shaded renderings)

Photographer: Clive Nichols

bellewood-gardens.com

bellewood-gardens.com

Photo by Thomas J. Story

Photo by William Wright

Photo by Thomas J. Story

You may have noticed something new up there at the top.
I was asked to join the Blogher network and that is there "tune-in"bar.

Starting August 1st, I will also have a sidebar add over there ->

Funny thing about working three job for yourself at home: you are forced to start valuing your time. As an obviously avid DIY'er, I have never before truly understood why people would hire out for things that they were fully able to do themselves. Before, it always seemed like I had or could make the time to do all the things that needed to be done, but now I'm dreaming of lawn services and cleaning people.

For everything that I do, I have to think to myself:  "Hm, should I be working right now? Is this worth the $/hr that I would be making if I was working?" That was my primary motivation behind joining the BlogHer network. I love blogging. It is fun, cathartic, and serves it original purpose very well.  (Which was to show my friends and family our renovation progress without having to email out a million photos.) But as you well know, I've been slacking with blogging. All the sudden life got really busy, and I couldn't justify spending time on something that I do just for fun.

Enter BlogHer.

By running some ads, I'll make a tiny bit of dough and alleviate my guilt. Here are my rules: no giveaways (because I find them boring), no hidden product promos (because that is just sneaky), no accepting free stuff for a positive blog mention (again, sneaky). I have been contacted to do some product reviews, but I'm not sure how I feel about that? What are your thoughts?

Anyway, back to the real stuff. Marc, Franca and I are currently on vacation, but I made Marc promise that two weeks after we come back I WILL have a fence and a patio. We are going to hire a helper for the weekends because it is just not working anymore to do this project during naps only. Here is the plan:

Week 1: Put up forms for the rest of the concrete wall around the butterfly bush.

Weekend 1: Marc, helper & I pour concrete wall, dig trenches for drains and install drains.

Week 2: Get dumpster delivered (way exciting). Get pea gravel delivered. Layout stones and install pea gravel. Empty piles into dumpster.

Weekend 2: Install fence. Let Franca run around in the backyard for the first time!!

I cannot wait, but I'm pretty sure Franca is more excited. She has spent our entire vacation outside showing us how much fun she is going to have in her new backyard:

I need to take a photo of my guns (aka arms) for this post, but it is 11:23pm and I just finished working for the day, so I'm too lazy.

But let me say this: I'm a bad ass.
No two ways about it.
No mamby-pamby asterisks to spell a**.
No being modest.

I'm a BAD. ASS.

Why? Guess who transported, lifted and emptied +TWENTY 80lb bags of concrete into the mixer this weekend? ME. I thought I might die, but I did it. That's how bad I want this patio.

Let's talk about this whole thing a little bit more:
Please note that 80lbs is 3/4s of my total body weight. So, I lifted myself, minus a leg or something, off the ground or wheelbarrow to the mixer over and over. I not only lifted, but I held my one-legged self at an about 60 degree angle and shook slowly to distribute myself (err, the concrete) into the mixer. Over and over. And over.

No worries that my legs keep going numb and my back is pretty tight.
I'm a bad ass. That's just how we role.

(And yes, I know I'm insane. It's Patio-Fever.)