There once was a path that was old.

It lived in a place that was cold.

With each long winter, the path would just splinter.

“It has to go, now,” DanO was told.

The front steps were scary,

Traversing them, hairy.

Replace them he must, but all that work and the dust!

If only there were a concrete fairy.

(Alas there is not

So DanO accepted his lot)

As the hours passed on

DanO was watched by his son

Who would like to someday

Follow his father’s way

Of knowing how to get everything done.

Hours turned into days,

The project well on it’s way,

But not quite far enough

Because as up pulled that truck

Things got a bit frantic, I’ll say.

In three days we had demo’d and built

And though we’d worked to the hilt,

The job was not through

Until the cement was there, too,

So we all shoveled at full tilt.

It’s messy stuff,

And the work, it was tough,

But the results do look great

And were well worth the wait,

Plus boy were those men ever buff.

~~~~~~

Ok, so I have just been informed by DanO that a poem does not, “do that huge project justice.”

(I rather liked it though?)

It’s just that he would apparently like me to say a few more words about the break-neck speed with which we tore out two tons of 75 year old concrete and replaced it with three new tons, thus marking the first time I have ever purchased something by the weight unit equal to 2,000 pounds. (TONS, PEOPLE. LITERAL TONS.)

It all started with a dumpster, a jackhammer, and a husband, but you guys pretty much know how that went. He spent all of Wednesday jackhammering (is that a verb?) and sledgehammering (completely unfamiliar verb territory here), followed by wheel barreling and dumping. He took all of 4.37 minutes to inhale dinner that night and was back out there demolishing and disposing. Good grief that was a long day (for both of us).

Thursday we took the day off to attend a family funeral. (That’s right, we completed this project in three days and one of them was a day off.)

Friday morning, 8am DanO was out there taking care of some last demolition but mostly preparing to build the concrete forms.

A brief pause to acknowledge those of you who, like me, feel baffled by the concept of forming stairs out of a liquid.

::blink blink::

I’ll just say that there was more geometry and trigonometry and crazymathology going on in my front yard than I ever had to do to earn my bachelor’s degree.

The building of the forms went on all afternoon, which was actually more like the building, supporting, leveling, measuring, remeasuring, re-leveling, re-supporting and rebuilding of the forms. Once the forms were settled upon, we filled up the base with some large gravel and then sand as filler. Unlike the mathology that DanO and his dad were doing, this was work I could get into. I carried and dumped bucket upon bucket of rocks into the forms, followed by carrying bag after bag of sand.

You may be asking yourself where OBaby was in all this. The answer is not traipsing around in my yard amongst the circular saws and jackhammers that were strewn about. He was safely at Nana’s house playing with blocks and getting his cheeks pinched.

At 4:28 (two minutes early) the cement company’s truck rolled to a stop in front of our house. There was a mad freaking dash to finish preparing (Did you know that rubbing oil on the insides of concrete forms prevents the concrete from sticking to the wood? Did you know that you can rub oil on three concrete tons worth of forms in two minutes flat?) and then the shoveling began.

I only participated in a portion of the shoveling because OBaby arrived shortly thereafter, plus well, I’m a girl (surprise!) and at this point OBrother had come to help after work making three highly qualified men available. The shoveling was followed by leveling and form tapping (tapping = vibrations. vibrations = fewer bubbles). The form tapping was followed by troweling, which was followed by corner rounding and general ‘finishing’.

The finishing was followed by breath-holding and form-removing.

All of which was followed by sleeping.

{Ta da! New steps!}

There, DanO, was that sufficient?

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 at 1:25 pm and is filed under House Projects, Our House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.