Concrete Heaven

There's nothing worse than peering out your front window onto a torn up front yard as the rain pours down and a river of dirty water and mud grow from the street to your front door. Nothing worse... except maybe sinking into the mud as you try to traverse your way into the house from the car and tracking that mud inside despite your best efforts to prevent it. No matter how many times you sweep up the chunks of mud that fall out of the grooves in the soles of your shoes or run the vacuum around the house, there always seems to be a layer of grit that you find with your bare feet as you grab a glass of water in the middle of the night.

That's why I find nothing better than to see the gorgeous grey concrete sidewalk spanning my front yard today.

Saturday, the work started bright and early at about 7:30am. The guys had the front walk and side of the house slab all framed up by 11am when the concrete truck arrived. They poured and trowled and swept, and had finished by the mid-afternoon. We were left with instructions to avoid walking on our beautiful new sidewalks until Monday morning. Tempting as it was, we managed to keep our toes off of until today. Ahh, what a wonderful feeling it was to walk out to my car this morning on that beautiful new sidewalk. I didn't have to feel guilty about crunching down the neighbor's lawn where I had already worn a path as I avoided the mud pit in my yard over the last couple of weeks.

No, the project's not quite done yet... But this is a BIG achievement. The lawn is re-graded and re-seeded. The grass has begun to grow. The sidewalk is poured. I can breath a sigh of relief. At least I won't be tripping up through the neighbor's yard carrying a little guy this winter.

What's left you ask... Well, that would be the beautiful Cedar deck that Eric has plans to build and steps to both the front and side doors. Here's a few pictures of the yard as it looks now.


Notice the big improvement that is the sidewalk! More to come as Eric's trusty friend Adam has volunteered to help Eric figure out how to dive into this deck project. With a little luck and a lot of determination, it will all be finished this fall... before the baby arrives.