For the past two days, while I have been smashing concrete with a hammer, my mind has been circling around one thought in particular: What the fuck am I doing? Is smashing all of this concrete with a hammer really the best use of my time? Probably not, but I’m like a freight train. It takes me a long time to get going, but once I’m moving get out of the way, there’s no stopping me.

This Is Nothing New

I once spent two days picking pea gravel out of a planter in my front yard, which we removed when we landscaped the yard. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so I picked every last pebble out of the dirt and filled buckets with them. It sure would be nice to have those buckets of gravel right about now. I don’t know where they went.

Logic would dictate that spending my time smashing concrete with a hammer is foolish. I should just buy road base from a store and have it delivered. I just can’t do it, though. All of this concrete is of no use in its current state, but I can put it to use. Plus, if I don’t use the concrete, then I’ll have to dispose of it. Smashing it into little bite-size pieces gets rid of it in its useless form and puts it to good use. That’s how my mind works, for better or worse.

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I looked for road base at Lowe’s, but to buy as much as I needed in the little bags they sell there would cost a fortune. Getting a scoop delivered or even renting a trailer and picking it up would be far more cost-effective. The only problem is that none of the businesses around here that do that kind of thing have entered the 21st century. They won’t give you the option to order online or even show their prices on their websites.

Fuck Your Customer Service

I would rather bust up concrete by hand than have to call a business and ask them how much they charge. I happened to have a wheelbarrow full of concrete that I chiseled out of my bathroom floor a year ago when a pipe broke in the slab, so I started with that. That wouldn’t be enough for the whole patio, but it went much further than I had expected. I was able to do over half of the base for the blocks before I ran out. I moved on to the concrete I busted out of the ground the day before yesterday. Much of it was way too big to use as a base, so I had to bust it up. I brought out an old chunk of steel that’s been knocking around my garage for decades to break the concrete on.

Easier Than It Looks

It went quickly, too quickly. I ran out about six feet from the end of the run. We’ve had a concrete birdbath laying in two pieces in our front yard for many years. I don’t know where it came from or how and when it broke, but I noticed it a few weeks ago and thought it would be an option for more filler when the time came. And now the time had come. I brought the larger piece out back and busted it up with the rotary hammer.

The concrete was quite a bit lighter than the other concrete I had been working with for the past two days. That made it very easy to break up with the hammer. I was able to complete my run, and then I used what was left over to fill in the space behind the blocks. I went ahead and busted up the other half of the birdbath and continued filling in the blocks until I was, once again, out of concrete.

Tomorrow, I think I’m going to dig up the rest of the footings that I broke up on Saturday. I only cut out enough to make a path for the blocks, but there’s no reason to leave the rest. Plus, I need more concrete. There is enough in the remnants of the footings to finish filling in the blocks. Ultimately, I will have to buy road base from somewhere, but at least now, I will have to buy less. And, as an added bonus, I’ve gotten rid of a bunch of concrete that wasn’t doing anybody any good.

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I started a new project today. I haven’t finished with the garage makeover yet, but both that and my new project are in time-sensitive phases. In the garage, I’m getting ready to sell all the stuff that I culled. The plan is to have a garage sale, but right now is not the best time to have a garage sale what with the rain and all. We’ll do better in the Spring, so there’s no urgency to do anything right now.

So, I’m turning my attention to the backyard. I’m leveling the area around my fire pit to lay a slate patio. I’m also running electricity to four points around the fire pit so that there will be plenty of places for people to plug in their phones. That’s the step I’m currently on.

Ok, So It’s Not Exactly A New Project

I started this project two years ago, but the ground was so hard I couldn’t dig down more than about an inch. So, I started again, in earnest last winter, when the ground was soft from rain. I barely started, though, before a pipe burst in the slab in my bathroom, and I had to shift my attention to that. By the time I got back outside at the end of March, the ground had dried out again. Plus, I didn’t really have a plan for what I wanted to do. I’ve had a whole year to think about it now, so all there is to do now is get to work.

I got most of the digging done last year, but there was a little more to do today so that I could bury a wire. After the rain we got last week, the ground was nice and soft. The only obstacle I ran into was the two footings I poured for my kid’s treehouse 14 years ago. It’s a good thing I haven’t sold everything in the garage. I was planning to sell the rotary hammer I bought to bust a hole in my bathroom floor last year because I didn’t think I would ever have a use for it again, but it came in mighty handy today. It made short work of those footings, and then I was able to move on to running the wire. I got half the wire run before my camera battery died, and the sun started going down. I’ll finish running the wire tomorrow.

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