Almeida Adventures: Concrete – May 29 & 30, 2018

The landscape job was completed at the end of March, but due to the rain and the backlog of jobs for the concrete guys, we had to wait another 2 months for the concrete!!! URGGGG. It really messed up our plans for our other DIY projects, but it all worked out in the end.

This is where the stepping stones used to be, nestled in bark. Every time we used the hose in this area, or walked the lawn mower over the stones, or it rained hard, the stones were covered with bark. We wanted to end that nightmare, so we decided to create a walkway to connect our main patio area to the small concrete patio outside of our bedroom. We also wanted to continue the walkway all the way down the side of the house, which was just decomposed granite. We hate the decomposed granite because it embeds itself to the bottom of your shoes and it gets tracked everywhere, including the garage and the house!

We also wanted to extend the walkway up to the house and under the hose because every time we turned on the hose it made a big mess in the dirt/bark.

That patch of concrete you see here is the small patio off our master bedroom. We had the walkway meet the patio here and extend down the side of the house.

Entrance to my garage.

They began by digging down where they needed, then laid the forms.

The concrete was fed through this super long tube by one guy, while several of the other guys worked the concrete. It was amazing to watch the process.

We wanted to match the existing concrete which was salted, so we did the same for the new concrete. Of course the colors are different because new concrete is gray and the 13 year old patios have changed to more of a tan color. Our plan is to stain all the concrete in the back yard. Hopefully we can get that done next summer. It will be a very long process because we now have a lot of concrete between the large patio and walkways down both sides of the house. We’ll do it ourselves to save money, but it will have to be done in sections.