Remember that episode where Lucy and Ethel rent a jack hammer and go to town with it on their stupid little backyard sidewalk?
What? They didn’t make that episode. Are you sure?
That’s weird, because I’m pretty sure Jamie and I reenacted it in our backyard yesterday.
Maybe I should start at he beginning….
The back of our house looks like this: (Ignore the blurry Doberman)
Not too big, not too small.
Ok, the backyard is a decent size, but that 6’X8′ slab of concrete the builder called a “patio” is ridiculously small. Not at all meant for entertaining.
A few years ago we planted the sage bushes and spruced up the furniture a little. But the Big Plan has always been to build a deck that extends the whole length of the back of the house. And one day add double doors from the den and master bedroom. Ahhhhh……perchance to dream.
This week, our contractor* assures us that he can make it happen. The deck part of the dream at least.
*Yes, we are a couple of “Do-It-Yourself” guys, but come on…..lets be realistic here. We don’t have to do everything ourselves. Especially when we have a home improvement credit card with an open balance on it. (Yepp, completely paid off the air conditioner/heater install, new electrical panel, granite counter tops, and sprinkler system….. So let’s do this)
The biggest issue with the new deck, since it will hover over the current patio and old air conditioner slabs, is the goofy little side-walk connecting the driveway to the patio.
This one:
We plan on adding huge pavers surrounded by pea gravel as a walkway….so that sidewalk has to go.
It’s about 12 foot long…shouldn’t be that hard to remove. It’s just 45 year-old concrete? Right?
After a failed attempt to lift the pieces with a shovel and a few swings with a pick ax and a baby sledge-hammer, it became apparent that it might be a little more solid than we thought.
“I’m going to Home Depot”, and I assumed that Jamie would come back with a larger sledgehammer.
Nope, he pulled out the big guns. A Makita jack hammer, all ours for 4 hours.
No instructions, just a power cord and an “ON” button built into the handle.
I guess that’s self-explanatory.
Aim it at the thing you wish to destroy, and hold the trigger. Texans understand this all too well.
I changed out of my flip-flops (Safety first) and gave it a try……
How hard could it be? I see meat-heads doing this in commercials all the time.
It’s a little more strenuous than it looks. The darn thing weighs about 80 pounds….and you have to lean all your weight on it. The vibrations are killer too….it’s not really as sexy as Hollywood makes it look in the movies.
We both jiggled like high-speed lava lamps.
But it worked fast. Real fast. Taking turns, it took the 2 of us about 30 minutes to break up the whole sidewalk.
The August Texas heat didn’t help matters, but we managed to haul all the concrete debris downhill to the alley behind our fence.
Jamie counts that as burning about 400 calories each.
Lord knows that Lucy and Ethel, and possibly these boys too, could stand to burn 400 calories each.
Now bring on that new deck…..
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