Our New Concrete

This week, we poured concrete in our backyard as a surprise for Mom and Rachel who are off in Washington. Actually, we didn't pour it, we hired somebody, who actually happens to go to our church. We've been needing/wanting to do this for a while, as you can see from the pictures. We have more cars than our driveway can handle. Anyway, back to subject, here are some pictures of the proccess. I took a picture of about everything do Mom and Rachel can see when they get back. Their approximate arrival time is about midnight. So that should be fun. The captions go to picture above. Here are the pictures (I know, there's a lot of 'em!)

This is before, you can see the rut where Dad drove over the "once there" grass. The stirred up dirt is where we dug up the bricks and pavers that we had placed there.

The old patio (that no longer exists). You can see the cracks.

This is the side of the patio where we expanded. We had to cut our garden back a little bit for the new concrete.

This is a place in the driveway where we patched as well. It's supposed to be a "before" picture, but I was a little late. You can still see the cracks though.

"Thar" she blows! Notice how thick the concrete was.

I've got to show you a little destruction.

Very nice.....

After they dug out and framed the area.

The patio dug and framed.

The patch dug and framed. They also used a saw to make the edges straight.

This is what I saw outside the window at 6:00 AM. The crew actually arrived at 5:00, yes, in the morning. My alarm went off at 4:30, but I don't have enough discipline to get up that early, apparently.

Since then, it was a mad dash to the finish, since we only have an hour to get the concrete off the truck.

It was like murder trying to get all that concrete up our steep driveway. They had to wheelbarrow it up. They had 2 people at the base of the driveway that helped the wheelbarrow "drivers" get up there. They ran up, too.

They got the support wire down at 5:00, but I wasn't up to get a picture, so here they are putting the concrete down.

They smoothed it out with a board after they got that certain section filled with concrete.

They had to trowel around the edges.

This is the thing they used to really smooth it out.

After being smoothed.

This was when they were putting the control joints into the concrete. These are so when the concrete cracks, it will crack where we want it, right under the surface, so we don't see the crack. There are 2 types of concrete: concrete that's cracked and concrete that's going to crack. All concrete cracks eventually. Also, the way the board was bending was humorous. Smart.

When it's all smoothed and ready to go, they spray a chemical on it that won't let the top layer of the concrete harden.

Then, after a wait of a couple hours, you wash the top layer off with a hose. Very fascinating to watch. Then, it turns into "washed" concrete.

Voila! Concrete. Of course, we can't drive on it or anything until next Friday. It looks great and a great new addition. We'll see how Mom reacts tonight: For Better Or For Worse. I couldn't find any pictures of the other patch, but it looks great, too.

!Adios! (I'm working on getting better at posting. Sometimes I just don't feel like it...) sourpatch