Concrete and more concrete

Concrete and more concrete

Oct 08

 

Yep, it’s been a really rainy Summer over here in good ol’ Ohio.

It’s October and I’m just now finishing up a concrete project here on the property that I planned to have had done in June or early July at the latest. The weather was more of a challenge than I anticipated this year.

This all started with a concrete pad that the previous owners had installed. The pad had cracked diagonally, and a chunk of the cement had to be removed last year to access the clean out port to our septic system (yes, they poured the pad over one of the septic system clean outs… sigh). The pad was an eye sore as well as a safety hazard with the chunk of concrete removed.

So I decided this was going to be the year to resurface the pad. Yeah, any normal person would buy a couple bags of cement resurfacer and squeegee it over the cracks and stuff to pretty it up and call it done. Nope, not me. I decided I’m going with a European worn cobblestone look with a hidden removable trap door over the septic clean out.

As I’m selling the idea to my wife, she requested I expand the project to include the grassy area between the sidewalk and the pad (from 100 sq. ft. of hardscaping to 254 sq. ft.). That turned out to be a great idea. Not only does it eliminate some precarious mowing, but it also makes for a much more natural walking path to the pad. It also gave me an excuse to use my Quickrete Country Stone Pattern pathmaker along with the new European Block Brick ones to add some extra detail to the project. Awesome!

I used about 70 eighty pound bags of Quickrete Crack Resistant concrete, 2 Quickrete European Block Brick forms, 1 Quickrete Country Stone Pattern form, 1 gallon of Quickrete High Gloss Sealer, and most importantly a concrete mixer from Harbor Freight to pull this project off.

The following pictures show the before and after of my efforts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I still need to put polymeric sand down to lock everything in place, but for the most part all the really hard work is done and this Summer long project is finally done.

 

—– Brandon