I Can Dig It

The weatherman finally cooperated with us long enough by sending beautiful temperatures today after a chilly start to the week.  We took advantage of the 60 degree plus weather to get a start on our next project: adding cement to the north side of the house.

Rick starts to put in 2 x 4 forms behind the
HVAC unit.

Today was a perfect day for digging, so that is what we -- or I should say Rick -- did.  The good thing about this project is that there is not a large area to fill with cement.  The bad thing is that the space is very confined (thanks to our HVAC unit), so only one person can fit in the space at any given time to actually do the work.

We decided to pour cement all the way under
the fence on the west side of the HVAC unit.

The morning was spent cutting out and pounding in the cement forms, then digging out the area within the forms to the correct depth.

By extending the cement this far, we will be able
to have a clean line of pavers when we get around
to adding them to the landscape.

Once again, this is the area that is filled with stones.  As we have done in the past, once the wheelbarrow was filled with the soil and stones Rick dug out, we transported it to various places in the yard where we needed some extra dirt.  Then I got out my handy sifter-table and sifted the stones and the roots out of the good, black dirt.  We trashed the roots and weeds, collected the stones, and used the remaining sifted dirt to fill in low areas in the back garden and under both the north and south sides of the fence.

Rick dug down a bit deeper in the main part
of the slab so we would have room to spread a
layer of the reclaimed stones from the area.

We added the sifted black dirt to the fence line on the south
and on the north fence lines.  

So now we are ready to pour cement; however, the weather probably will not cooperate for the next couple of days.  We have a 90% chance of thunderstorms tomorrow, and they are supposed to linger until Thursday morning.  We'll probably let things dry out a bit on Thursday afternoon so we can start fresh pouring cement on Friday morning.

Don't you just love it when life holds a plan?