removing the breezeway steps

There are currently stairs inside the breezeway that lead up to the kitchen door. The stairs are steep and uncomfortable to use. The solution? Demolish them, move the door, and pour new steps!

Starting to chip away at the steps. The concrete is rock hard and only little bits break off at a time – even with the jackhammer!

Jackhammering away. The round metal thing on the left side of the second step is a built-in trashcan.

Evan hands out donuts to keep the momentum going!

The stairs are solid concrete – no fill! Concrete must have been cheap back in the day.

This represents about two days of jackhammering…

Success at last!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

removing the site stair

It turns out that the concrete stair connecting the upper and lower terraces was impossible to remove with a regular jackhammer, a concrete saw, and a backhoe. So today, the boys from Forest Landscape brought out the mother of all jackhammers and a mobile generator to go with it.

The mobile generator needed to run the mother off all jackhammers.

The mother of all jackhammers only managed to chip little bits of concrete off the stair.

Still jackhammering. Of course this happened on the day I had my lady friends over for lunch. Nothing like a little jackhammering while dining on quiche and salad.

The site super makes sure everything is ok from his post at the dining room door.

After hours of jackhammering, they managed to free the site stairs. They were over 4′ thick!

Excavating for the footing for the new retaining wall.

Still excavating for the footing and wall. They managed to find (but not break) the main sewer line coming out of the house – we were wondering where that was!

The excavated area filled with gravel.

Formwork is delivered and stacked against the back of the house. Notice the site super at his perch in the upper window.

Not bad for a day’s work.