When I took my Mom down to Colorado to see her grand-kids/great-grand-kids, she mentioned to me that she wanted to have a sidewalk put in from in front of her house around to the garage door. As most of you know, I have had a few dealings with contractors and told her it was gonna be pretty hard to find someone willing to do such a small job. Of course her response was *sigh*.
When my folks built their garage many, many, many moons ago, Dad had just laid some palettes down to make a make-shift sidewalk. As you can imagine, over time, they have become pretty crappy, and rotted, and yucky, and well, just time for them to go away. I asked Mom if she could wait until spring to have a sidewalk put in as I thought Bill and I could go over and pour then, not knowing if the weather would hold out long enough to get it done this fall.
Once I returned home, I told Bill what I had volunteered us to do. I have a wonderful husband. The more we talked about it, the more we both agreed that the sidewalk really did need to get put in this fall so Mom wouldn't have such a tripping hazard with those rotted palettes to cross every time she went to and from the garage.
Bill and I looked at the weather and decided last weekend was the time to head back to Billings to pour some concrete.
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| Steps 1 & 2: Get rid of those awful pallets and *try* to till that ground up to dig out for the concrete. NOTICE: Rose bushes have been moved. |
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| No job is complete without supervision - this job required two. |
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| Rake, shovel, repeat. Man, is that ground hard. |
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| We had to re-till the ground multiple times to be able to get deep enough to get the dirt out. Very thankful we took the roto-tiller up with us. We'd STILL be there digging. "Slot" dug, forms set, mesh laid. Bruce came over when he got off work and gave us a hand getting some of the back fill done. |
No, there are no pics of pouring the concrete as I was rather busy on the end of the shovel and I didn't have time to get the pics Mom took put on my hard-drive. Trust me, there may not be any pics of me, but I worked just as hard. Had the draggin' butt to prove it.
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| Again, Bruce came over when he got off work the night we poured. His help was tremendous with the last half of the pour and all the finish work. |
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| Things are cured enough Bill and Bruce were able to go ahead and edge the concrete. Sure was lookin' nice at this point. |
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| And the almost finished product. All the edges are done; unfortunately, the mud didn't cure quick enough for us to be able to strip the forms prior to leaving. Doesn't matter, Bruce said he would strip and finish back filling. The important thing: Mom is HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY. (I know she was happy, most telephone conversations started out with "I'm getting a new sidewalk", then turned to "I have a new sidewalk".) Thanks for all the help Bruce. In Bill's words, "Thank God for brother-in-laws!" |
While there, Bill, Bruce and I talked about the lack of motion detection light and all agreed that would be a great idea and that it really should get done - sooner, rather than later. When I told Mom what we all had decided needed to happen, if she was agreeable, she said her only objection is they had one before and it shined into her bedroom. Well, I'm married to not only a super nice guy, but a pretty handy one at that. The light was moved around the corner, with new motion detection installed, and set to shine on that brand new sidewalk of hers - where it will do her some good. Now that it's all done, Mom said she wished they would have done it a couple years ago. I wish she would have mention it ten years ago - when we were all younger and had stronger backs. But, with that said, all in all, a pretty successful weekend - even if there wasn't a pheasant in sight.
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