Tuesday, September 4, 2007

The Concrete is Done!

This is a banner day. At long last, I poured the last of the concrete for the patio foundation, thus ending this phase of the project. Behold:

If you look closely, you may note that there are a couple of slabs toward the far end of the patio that are darker than all the others. Those are the two that I poured today.

Just for a sense of perspective, here's a picture taken from almost the same spot, aimed about 45° (.785 radians, for you math folks) to the right:

The stones you saw in my previous post are all the way at the end of this walk, and around the corner to the left.

Sooooo... Now all that needs to be done is the back-fill. And the borders--which will obviously require a whole bunch of weedwhacking. And Round-Up. And screeding a layer of sand on top of the concrete, followed by the laying out of the stones. And of course I then need to sweep sand into the cracks between the stones, and get one of those funny vibrating tamper-thingys to make everything even. And then I get to apply the sealant! Followed by more back-fill.

Nevertheless, I'm a happy man right about now. As you can see, this has been a big job. For a sense of scale, I used up about 13.5 cubic yards of gravel--most of which for the gravel bed under the slabs, but probably about 4 or 5 cubic yards or so which went to mixing cement. I used up about 2.5 cubic yards of sand as well, and somewhere between 60 and 70 bags (47-pounders) of portland cement.

All goes well, I'll have this done before late October. I'd really like to have this thing done within a year of having started it.

2 comments:

Chris said...

Dude! (OK, Timothy),

Your poured concrete / future brick-stone path/terrace way beats my play fort.

Re the trees in my backyard, that's the benefit of living in the mountains. I'll post a picture of the view from the upper deck soon so you can appropriately admire / relish.

Prayers for Tonya, you and the kids. Hope the recovery is going well. I was blessed with an amazing Mother-in-law to get me through the pregnancy.

Live from a hotel room in DC (where the politicians are a never-ending source of humor-fodder).

Chris

Timothy Power said...

Yeah, but as you can tell from my pictures, your play fort way beats our play fort.

(Insert joke about "You da Man"/"No, YOU da Man" here.)

And there's no terrace in this part of the project. If you want to see the terrace, you have to turn another .785 radians to the right. I did that part two summers ago. :)

But I hear you about living in the mountains. Before Tonya and I moved to the Sacramento area, we were actually trying to find a job in the Flagstaff, Arizona area. Ever been there? Gorgeous! The town is at about 7000 feet, and is impossible to see from the freeway from all those big trees in the way. And when you get out of the trees, you're in alpine meadows with big mountains in the background. We fell absolutely in love with it when we visited. Unfortunately, there aren't too many jobs there for software engineers.

Could you send a little of that humor-fodder around? After all this heavy blogging, I'm fighting writers' block. I want to write; I'm just having a hard time coming up with ideas.

Thanks for dropping by, and many thanks for the prayers. They are appreciated.