One thing that Blue Mountain Oasis taught me is respect mother nature! Over the past 8 years I've came to learn a lot about what rain water can do to a property. At Project Hillside, I am taking measures to direct every bit of water away from the house. With the fence in place, I wanted to remove more of the poured concrete that was a walkway to the garage. Something about poured concrete walkways annoys me .. I like to keep walkways natural looking, with a natural stone to the location of the property.
I picked up my sledge hammer and started taking swings. For anyone that hasn't busted concrete walkway by hand, consider yourself lucky. It is painful! This project had two parts:
1. Maintain one solid piece to use for the grill (temporary) on the other side of the property.
2. Bust the rest up and prepare the natural foundation.
The first step required me to pry up a 2x2 layer of concrete (9 cubic feet). Now, if you are a dork like me, you'll have an idea that a cubic foot of concrete weights about 120lbs. My section would weight 480lbs. Getting under it, and lifting it took all my might! I was the only one to tackle this project, but yet again, I said I could do it.
Long story short, it took every bit of motivation I had to get this thing upright and flipped. I had to repeat this step about 10 times to get it to the final location for the grill. Yikes .. my arms, legs, and body was killing me. Overall, I would of collectively moved 4,800 lbs!
The rest was simply to be busted. Sounds easy, but swinging a sledge at concrete, cracking it, and moving it, sucks! A jack hammer makes it cake, your own arms make it death!
Once the concrete was gone, I ran the drain pipe to dump the water away from the house and down the driveway. I brought in 400lbs of top soil to bring the slope up and eventually plant grass and set the new natural stone.
