Greenwood Heights Backyard: contractors
November 25, 2008
The Final Day Arrives, Phase One Complete!
As the dawn of the last day rose, we were not sure that the crew would be able to finish up with only a half day's worth of "work time" left, but they had surprised us before.
On the hit list: finish up the pavers, bring in the remaining pea gravel, brush in "lock sand" into the pavers and wet it all down so, as Gaspar was fond of saying, "it'll look NICE." (overlay words with a great Canarsie accent)
The remaining pavers went down quickly with most of the more intricate "piece work" taking the bulk of the time, with the crew custom cutting shapes and slices to fit in any remaining gaps in the pattern.
Photo: Making quick work of the paver "piece work."
Photo: Final paver pattern.
Continue reading "The Final Day Arrives, Phase One Complete!"
November 11, 2008
Stone and gravel galore: days five and six.
When last we left off, the patio was poured and faced with cultured stone. We had added back into the mix the 15 foot planter box for the bamboo...the rest of the work would be to finish the install of the remaining cultured stone, add blue stone caps to the box, stairs and patio edge, layout the pathway and seating area, then bring in our reused (and some new) bluestone for stepping stones, layout the pavers on the patio...add in a final layer of pea gravel, then the crew at Your Way Contracting would be done! Here's how the two days went.
The main work yet to be done was the final grading of the yard and the layout of the 11X11 foot seating area and paths.
Photo: Bird's eye view of the work site.
Continue reading "Stone and gravel galore: days five and six."
October 27, 2008
Mr. and Mrs. Tikihouse get stoned!
As we intimated in our last post, the original "downsizing" of our hardscaping project and been "upsized" again with generous donations from our family.
So, we were able to add back in the bamboo raised planter and had to make the "hard" decision (pun intended) on what to face the new planter, steps and ledge of the new patio area.
Diagram: adding back in the planter, now 15X3 feet.
Our original spec for the raised planters was for a matching "granite city blend" stackable wall product from Nicolock to a match our pavers. At $13/sq. ft for materials only, that match was out. In addition, we had time to take a look at the space as it was evolving. Since we would be adding bluestone to the seating area below the patio and white/tan pea gravel, it occurred that we might want to further accentuate the seating area with another similar look.
In addition, we decided to nix the second planter box, partially due to price and partially due to the need to soften up the seating area with a planting bed, not box, for clumping bamboo, grasses, etc.
The options for facing the planter box, stairs and the 24 inch high ledge from the patio down to the seating area (which never occurred to us) were outlined by Gaspar of Your Way Contracting. Typically folks face these types of areas with pavers (as Gapar said "looks like sh•t," from the sample photos it did!), stucco (which would be ok, but not necessarily match the look and have maintenance issues down he road) or cultured stone (a product made from stone dust, porcelain and cement that is cast into natural looking stone shapes). Of course there was also brick, but we already had four floors of that!
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.
Continue reading "Fixing, Framing and Pouring...patio is up next!"
October 6, 2008
Crack that pad! The back yard demo begins.
After finally wrapping up our agreement with our friendly neighborhood developer, we were all set to begin the demo of the back yard.
This consisted of:
1. demolition of the back 20X26 ft. concrete patio (yes, that's a hellava lot of concrete!)
2. demo of the "rat slab" (walkways or slabs poured less than 3 inches thick) in our walkway to the shed.
3. cartage of what turned out to be 2 yards of debris (we filled the container)
4. regrading of dirt for new patio, seating area, paths and yard.
Photo: Patio demo during day one.
(more photos in the gallery at the end of the post)
With all of that done, we could then move onto the actual hardscape construction.
As Gaspar at Your Way Contracting had said, "we're gonna hit you hard" from day 1. He showed up with his crew of five workers, most of whom have been with him for many years, and began the demo in earnest. They showed up at 8:00am and worked a full days till 5:00pm, with only short lunch breaks. Certainly harder than some of the work we have seen in the new building!
Photo: Both hand demo and the good-ol-jack hammer.
(more photos in the gallery at the end of the post)
Continue reading "Crack that pad! The back yard demo begins."
September 12, 2008
Messing with the bull, get ready for the horns!
Let us return back to our original post and the idea that due to the construction fence being up, our point-of-view of our back yard changed. Along with that idea, so did the plan of just replacing the immense concrete patio "as-is" (or rather "as-was") with alternate materials such as pavers, flagstone and gravel.
Above: this is what we might have replaced originally
(and yes, the construction fence is down, more on that later)
We certainly were on-board with the new ideas proposed by Fun City Design, and we thought our friendly neighborhood developer was as well. That is, until he saw the bill.
Now I know what everyone is going to say: "You should have gotten all of this in writing from the developer." Well, in theory, that's correct, in practice, it's near impossible. We have know several folks who have been in similar situations, had property "used" or damaged by a development project and a "deal" with the developer, whether it be a handshake or a letter of commitment. It ultimately comes down to the character of the developer and how they see their ROI and bottom line. We have seen developers stay true to their word (and then some) and we have seen others flagrantly disregard any written deal they may have had with our friends.
Ours was a spoken word, hand shake agreement from day one.
OK, to set the record as straight as I can, our friendly neighborhood developer never said "no way." What he did was a bit of a switcheroo.
Continue reading "Messing with the bull, get ready for the horns!"
September 3, 2008
Four Interviews, One "Way" to Go.
Now, with a good working set of plans, and a thumbs up on the basic idea from our friendly neighborhood developer, we went about starting the search for a hardscape contractor.
But first, a shameless, but long over due, plug for Fun City Design's new website (hurry up, check it out now!)
The contractor would be responsible for the demo of the existing patio concrete slab and pathway "rat slab" concrete paths (learn a new term every day, named for the 3 inch thickness and size...rat?), and construction of the paver patio, seating area, raised paver planters and pathways.
Like doctors, dentists and hair dressers, a good recommendation for a contractor (any trade for that matter) can be hit or miss (as we found out from our home reno). We did receive four recommendations from the developer (a double-edged sword, we realized) and one from the folks at Fun City Design.
We quickly met with four of the five contractors (one never returned our phone call, no surprise). All four looked at the plans, took measurements and listed to our ideas, adding in their own recommendations to what "would work and would not work" according to Fun City's plan. ALL of the contractors said a MAJOR component to the project was the demo and how to cart it out through the new unfinished four story building next to us (part of the deal).