Step One

An early morning telephone call is not necessarily a good thing.  Many times such calls revealed  news of ill or passed away relatives, warnings about storms or other natural disasters, pleas for help, or other unwelcome news.  Today, however, our early morning call (which came just as Rick was getting up and as I was eating breakfast), was from the contractor who told us that he was coming a day early to dig out the area for our new patio.  The wait is over!

The area in our back yard where we want to place the patio.

The original 5 x 8 foot slab built in 1960 did not fit modern lifestyles.

He arrived as promised with his son and one other worker.  They looked over the area, took lots of measurements, and came up with a plan for our patio.  Although the concrete will go higher under one of our two back doors than we had planned, the contractor promised us that the pitch would be right and that the rainwater would all wash away from the house.  Pray.

Workers break up and dispose of the original slab.

Then they started with the digging.  The dirt itself was fairly dry and loose, but they did find the remains of the ear tree that used to grow in that area.  Of course, the large roots were right were they wanted to dig deeper to put in a bell footing for the corner of the slab.  The old concrete slab was supposed to be only four inches thick, but in some places is was 6 - 8 inches thick and very difficult to break up.  In the end, though, they broke, wheelbarrowed, and removed all of the concrete from the back yard.

The patio area starts to take shape as workers add forms to the area.

Since our yard has many uneven areas and low spots, we asked them to just pile the dirt in some of the problem areas of the yard.  Not only did they do so, but they also spread out much of the dirt for us.  Sadly, we raked the majority of it back up into small piles to sift since most of the dirt was filled with stone, grass, sticks, and other debris.  We finished almost all of that work today after they left.  What is left, we will finish tomorrow morning, hopefully before the Inspector comes to approve what they have done so far.

Plastic covers the area that the contractor had sprayed to keep
termites away from going under the slab to get to the house.

Rebar rests in the footing area of the patio.

We have to wait the weekend before we will get the cement poured  The contractor promised that he would be back on Tuesday with a truck load of cement to complete the work.

The excavated dirt fills in a low area on the south side
of the Florida room.

We are excited to finally get a patio slab poured in the back.  We then will have a clean area on which to sit and relax without having to worry about a mud patch each time we get a little rain.  Perhaps some day we will save enough to put up a lanai.  Until then, we will be thankful for what we have.