Phase Two involves five primary goals:
And looks something like this:
The materials were delivered for the deck, walkway and fence in early September.
Our driveway looks like this:
I put up the fence posts (in the process rupturing the gas main to the house!)
and began applying the fencing material mid-September. Here's what things look
like as of Sept 14th. In case you are wondering, I'm fencing to my neighbors
houses at the same time - striving for a consistent look. I can't finish these
sections yet because Home Depot delivered fir 1x4's instead of cedar 1x4's.:
At the same time, I'm breaking up the existing concrete deck. It has been
a very difficult job. I rented a diamond wet saw over the weekend and scored
it, but the deck is over 6" thick in places. Just for fun, the rented
saw rolled loose in our van and shattered the rear window. That was fun. Here's
what it looks like as of Sept. 14th:
And the stacks of broken up deck:
What's so lovely is that I scored them too far apart. So many of the sections
weigh upwards of 150 pounds. Lovely. And my goal is to carry them to the bottom
of my hill and put them on the outside of my fence to create a barrier between
my fence and the masses of blackberry bushes! That's why I'm carving the whole
thing into sections instead of just jackhammering it into little pieces. I'll
tell you later if it's worth it. Here's the process - first, I sledgehammer
in a masonry chisel into one of the cracks. This can take anywhere from 10
minutes to 45 minutes, depending on how many times the chisel decides to fly
across the yard and how stubborn the concrete is.
After I get the chisel in as far as I can, I then begin to whack it sideways
as hard as I can to break the piece loose. Then I shove a mean ol' tool in
the crack and pry it loose.
Finally, I can lift the 100-150 pound chunk of concrete up a few inches and
duck walk it over to my growing stack of busted concrete chunks. You can see
in the cut sections behind the lifted sections just how deep my four hours
of concrete sawing successfully did.
That's where things stand as of mid-September. Soon, I hope to add more to this scintillating tale of sweat, blood and tears.
Phil