October 15, 2008

Fixing, Framing and Pouring...patio is up next!

After two mega days of demolition on the old concrete slab, we were back to dirt and some surprises.

Pleasant surprise was that our home had little to no damage over the years under the concrete pad, probably mostly due to the back porch overhang, according to Gaspar at Your Way Contracting. Our neighbor's two-story frame house did not come out of it as well, but not too worse for wear.

We had alerted our neighbor (funny anecdote, he actually helped hand-mix the mega-slab we just removed back in 1965 as a teenager) that we would be doing the work several weeks before hand so he could have his contractor at the ready if anything turned up. Since he was prepped, we called Jim Irwin Contracting from L.I. and had the crew come over to check out the home's extension footing and beams.

Photo: The fixing of our neighbor's dry rot.

Some dry rot had permeated the sheathing and studs, but the footer and main beams were in good shape. Jim's crew made quick work of removing some of the recently redone vinyl siding (nicely done to match ours by our good neighbor), repairing the damage, adding waterproof sheathing and burring metal flashing over the affected area down 18 inches below grade. We'd do our fare share by back pouring a curb along the new work to seal it in.

In addition, we were also happy that morning to have the delivery of our "granite city blend" pavers from Nicoloc (actually they were so nice to look at, unfortunately someone "helped themselves" to 20 some odd pavers during their storage...not a huge hit, but an unhappy Mr. and Mrs. Tikihouse!).

Onto the next day and Your Way's patio form framing and pour of the new 18X20 foot patio.

During the demo, we had met with our designer Diana (Fun City Design) and took into consideration adding a few feet back onto the patio, to 18 feet from 16 feet. While we had wanted to go as far back as possible from the original 20X26 feet. 20X,16 feet seemed very comfortable, and gave us more yard, but when we thought about the use (table/chairs, grill, bar, potting bench, etc.) Gaspar suggested we needed a wee bit more room. After looking at the pros/cons and learning the bump in $$, we decided to add the additional 2X20 feet.

So, back to the patio. Framing was needed for the front of the patio pour and the two steps to the back yard grade (another financial surprise due to the new grading of the patio, we need two steps to go down from the 24 inch tall patio instead of the old single step, now removed).

Photo: concrete forms "all formed up."

Gaspar made us aware that they we're going to pour the pad "the right way" by pouring the pad, steps and front in one monolithic pour, rather than the "code" but substandard cement block steps and front patio with a concrete back fill.

This meant much framing...and a ton of concrete.

After 3 hours of framing and regrading, the ready mix truck from Kings Materials (who seems to be ubiquitous in our area, actually 95% of our materials will end up coming from Kings for the hardscaping). Part of the deal with our friendly neighborhood developer was the materials in and out of the back yard would go through their new structure (still unfinished interior). That meant Gaspar's crew got quite a work out schleping 10+ yards of concrete through the building, into our yard and up a ramp to the pad. Very hard work! (while we could have opted for a pump truck for the concrete, piping and pumping it through the building, that was not in our budget)

Photo: From curb, though building, into our yard and into the patio. Whew!

Photo: That's on the level.

The patio began shaping up immediately and the crew began to pull out the leveling and work on the stairs. The pour was finished up by the creation of the footing for the new bamboo planter box (YES we had a few gifts from our generous parents, thus allowing expansion of the downsized plan from pre-demo, more on that post-pour!) and curb to the neighbors house.

Photo: Finishing up the footing for our bamboo planter box.

By days end, we had a new patio, some very tired workers, and a new phase done in our back yard reno.

Photo: Final touches on the patio pour

Here's an extended gallery of the photos from the day(s) below:

Next up, explanation in the newly re-adjusted plans, planter box gets built and things begin to "stack up." Stay tuned.

Posted by tikihouse at 8:00 AM | Comments (0)
Categories: concrete, contractors

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.brownstoner.com/mte/mt-tb.cgi/6740

Comments