Cement Work

Thursday morning at 7 a.m. Josh was back to power wash the new cement.  We had been quite surprised by how brown the cement was.  We thought we'd chosen something more of a rusty red.  The power washing strips off the smooth top layer and exposes the grave underneath.  When it was finished we thought it looked great!

Then he spent a long time washing off the cement that had splashed up onto the house, the doors and the windows.  You can see the splash up on the wall and door of the garage behind him.  He did suggest that I wash the doors, windows and window frames again that day to remove the final, dusty layer of splash up.  I did that, and it all looks great now.

So now we have a nice four foot apron surround those sides of the house.

We had a brick patio outside the back door that
Jim had created several years ago.  Those bricks
had all been lifted up to make room for this new construction.  Now Jim plans to relay them in this muddy area between the house and the driveway.

Last night he was trying out the fit of the bricks, starting with the path from the house to the driveway.








 This is roughly how it will look, except that the nearer portion with have the other pattern of patio blocks on either side, stretching along that entire back wall of the house.

But before the patio can be laid, the end juniper needed to be removed.  The bucket on the tractor is good for that job.

Jim also brought several tractor buckets of sand to the area to provide a base for the new patio.  That sand has to settle for a while, then be compacted and levelled and then he can relay the blocks to form the new extended patio.

This is the second of his major jobs this summer (the first being cleaning out the pond in the front yard), and we're both very pleased that it has progressed this far.

We are also both very gratified and pleased with the great job that Joshua did, with his crew, in preparing, pouring and finishing the cement.  They worked quickly and well, and the result is lovely.