A Bright Spot in Fall

The past few weeks, the temperatures have been dropping, so have a crapload of leaves. A few weeks ago, I finally got around to seeding the bare earth around the newest concrete work which has since produced a nice bright spot in all the fall dreary.

To integrate the new hardscape, I left space between the new pads to regrade against and plant grass to seamlessly tooth the landscape and concrete pads together. Considering the summer drought torched our lawn, this is the only actual 'green spot' of grass in our landscape.

Here's the view walking out the front door. After clearing the leaves a bit, the lines of green prevail. We're hoping next Spring to replace the remaining existing concrete walkway with similar bars of concrete to finish off the front of the house. Attempting to get the rest of the yard as newly green will also be on the agenda.

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - The Gray Has Arrived

Without further ado, I've completed painting for the season after a month of priming and painting. This past Saturday the weather made it into 'paintable' conditions to which I took full advantage. With two coats on all surfaces visible from street view, the vision is complete, until next spring. The dark gray is very striking from the street, redoing the fascia was well worth the payoff.

And soon to be forgiven, but not forgotten is where we started 5-1/2 years ago. If you've been following along, it's been quite a slow, yet rewarding process. So long beige.

DIY Chimney Crown Repair

Uniquely, our house has a huge chimney, almost 12' long and 2'-6" wide. And due to 57 years of weathering, let's say it's seen better days. Our original intention was to have a new metal cover made for it as part of our roof contract. Since our roofer was unable to secure a metal band around chimney cap supplier, we ended up having to deal with the existing chimney crown. Every time we would get a heavy rain, we'd get a few drops in our fireplace, not good. I chiseled into the fossil like layers of said crown to the left only to find cmu coursing stepping up, thus the large mound of seeming concrete on our chimney.

With a little research, I found a great product called Crown Coat from a local supply website. One evening I did all the prep work to the existing cracks then taped it all off before applying the product. It's like painting thin concrete and dries pretty quick and evenly. Although a temporary fix, I'd say the money was well worth it for a 15 year warranty product. After a good rain I inspected the results to see the crown was shedding water as well as most of the new roof. The next step before winter is to do some tuckpointing repairs on the rest of the chimney. Hopefully I can find someone to fabricate a cap down the road, aka next year.

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After

Mid Century Modern Curb Appeal - And The 'Crete' Goes On

I like to pour concrete, maybe one day we will pour some all the way out to the street. For now, in awaiting the new roof, I've been itching to work on some curb appeal outside. Alas while taking a week off last week, I impromtu decided to start throwing a sledgehammer at the existing walkway. Having complete two phases of concrete work on the porch and the landscape enclosure walls, I was thinking it was time to work on our patched walkway that leads to the house. Seeing as the sledge hammer wasn't doing much, I had to run and rent a jackhammer, a fun toy that can easily can get out of control.

In these first couple of photos, note the existing curvilinear walkway with a temporary patch we did to tide over the previous demolition. The plan was to infill the corner with four long walkway pads and also extend the lefthand planter enclosure. Eventually we will pour more stepped beds around the side of the house, the new extension will be right next to our property line.

A couple sweaty hours later, I had the existing walkway out to the next expansion joint. The design allows us to be able to keep the existing walkway and the existing expansion joint lined up almost perfect with the pavers in the grass. It was right about now, the crane truck with the roofing materials showed up for delivery.

While there was a ladder out I headed up to the roof to grab an aerial shot for a little perspective. Shadow was unavoidable.

My next step was to layout the overall outline for excavation and dig out the existing grass. Then I had to place 4" gravel fill and compact with a hand tamper. Using some of the demoed concrete and some already on hand gravel, everything worked out about perfect.

For forming up the concrete, I framed the outline of the pads using 2x6's so that the pads would be thicker and have a little more hefty presence. Using a double 2x6's in between the four pads, we'll eventually fill the gaps with dirt and plant grass. This will require some regrading down the road.

Moving on to the planting bed, the new wall enclosure steps down equally with the steps so they both are extensions on plane with one another. Using coated plywood and 2x4' I created a 6" wide and 18" deep wall form. As this was the end of the first day I didn't make it to bracing and fully leveling the frame. Not bad for a day's work.

The next morning I braced and leveled the wall forms, piled a ton of concrete chunks in and around the base. Then I piled all the soil I dug up from the front walkway pad excavation around the outside base of the formwork. My uncle Ed, the concrete finishing master, stopped by to help me out on the day of the pour. I use a Mini Mix truck company for the concrete, the smaller truck does less damage to the landscape. We started the pouring with the walls on the side.

Next we filled the pad formwork. It was a super hot day so we had to move quick. After filling the forms we had to manually tap the sides with hammers to help fill any voids, then we screeded the concrete level. We then floated a smooth finish, edged the sides, and finally Ed finished the concrete with a rubber float. Ed has done the same hand finish to all the concrete work we've done so it was best left to his artful hand.

A day's work done, the concrete bakes away into the evening sun.

Here's a good view of the side wall and all it's bracing glory. Didn't budge hardly at all during the pour, but it's suprising how powerful the concrete filling the forms can be.

Yesterday I pulled the formwork off both poured pieces and stored the formwork for future use. Here's a view from the neighbor's yard for a little perspective on the overall additions. Don't mind all that roofing material up on the roof.

Another final view of the approach. Next we'll get to work on the grass seed and grading with some fresh topsoil. First, we'll let the roofers make a big happy mess.

Mid Century Curb Appeal - DIY Modern Screen Wall

My mock up of our new Mid Century Modern screen wall withstood the entire winter and spring with hardly a nudge. I guess I wasn't expecting much from a over thousand pounds of concrete block. This project was part of our Curb Appeal series that we left last fall I finally got around to setting this puppy in place and figured it was a good opportunity to explore a 'how to' blog post highlighting my process of something from start to finish. Before proceeding, please refer to the Gened up 'before' scenario here, a long overdue green lumber fence, no thanks Gene.

Although the mock up wall, freestanding by none other than its own weight was doing okay, the plan was to 'set' the wall permanently and level it out. The mock up revealed the concrete base wall we had poured was not exactly level in either direction. This photo shows the wall out of plumb about an inch with the blocks 'stepping' a bit indicating the wall was leaning the other way as well. The plan was to use a bed of mortar on top of the concrete wall to use as a leveler and then glue the blocks together. Technically the wall would need to withstand a 250 lb point load to any point of the wall. I have mucho faith in Gorilla glue.

My entourage of equipment included (1) 10 lb bag of mortar mix, 4' & 1' levels, knee pad, bucket, drop cloth, rubber mallet, (cold chisels), trowel, brush, rubber coated gloves, and of course the glue.

Although not pictured, the wall screens our electric meter (previously on the front of the house), and our trash/recycling bins not shown in any of these photos. One of the main reasons I chose the block I did is the transparent nature of the block once the leftover concrete in the holes starts to come out. The tedious task of busting all the holes out was the first thing in line.

I tried a couple of ways to knock the concrete out of the holes, it ended up that my super long handy dandy chisel was the best tool for the job. I threw down the drop clothes to catch all, make that some of the debris and went to town.

Along the way to feel some sense of progress, I started disassembling the blocks. This also gave me the chance to brush off and clean the blocks of little grit and debris before their final placement.

As I'm more than halfway through at this point I started having fond memories of picking through the pallette of blocks at the store to find all the perfect ones. Then had to make two trips with the wagon to get them home, the car was on the ground for both trips. At each block weighing 23lbs, 56 blocks = 1,288lbs total moved 6 times = sore back.

Once the block was removed, it was time to dig into the leveling issues. As suspected there was a heavy 1/2" lean going down towards the house and slightly towards the rear of the house.

After quickly mixing up the small batch of mortar in the bucket by hand, I recalled all of my lessons from 'This Old House' episodes and threw down my best version of a base mortar bed using my hand trowel. Before doing so I was sure to get everything nice and wet to keep the moisture in the mortar. Also made sure not to use all the mortar so I could fill in the face gaps after setting the block.

After getting the mortar base down it was time to wiggle the block into place and level across the wall at the same time. Sounds simple with just a 4 block width, but it took a few time and adjustments to get it right. This was the most difficult and time consuming part of the job.

Since the block will have some thermal expansion with the change in weather, I made sure to leave a little space between the blocks. Working from one side to the other the base course was set. I then filled the needed gaps in the mortar and hosed off the driveway, it was time for the fun part.

You might have to enlarge this photo to see the Gorilla glue dots, 10 per block. Since water activates this glue I kept the block nice and soaked between each course. The weight of the block is enough to keep the glue from rising which it tends to do. I also decided to glue the wall freestanding and not anchored to the house. The brick will move independently of the block so there was no sense in creating a problem.

About halfway up, I'm avidly awaiting the cover up of the electric meter. Along the way I double checked the levelness and alignment like a hawk. End was in sight.

The finished job to the right still in the process of drying. I gave it a couple days to set up and with a lack of fancy scientific measuring devices, I physically tried to push the wall over, no dice. This beast is solid, freestanding on its own, and in the event the next homeowner could somehow conceive of the notion to knock it down some day, it wouldn't affect the house. But why would someone do that?