I’ve been working on our back yard with my son-in-law. The wife wants various pads poured. a new storage shed built, sprinklers put in, landscaping done, etc. I have no personal need for any of it except the shed. It has been a tribulation.

Bags of concrete weigh 90 lbs. Home Depot delivered them to our driveway on pallets. All 100 of them. That’s 9000 lbs. Step one was to dig out or fill in the areas to be paved such that we’d have a 4-inch pad. Then we had to schlep them all into the backyard. We did that with a wheel barrel and a dolly 4 bags at a time.

Sand, gravel, and broken concrete that will someday become pavers. In addition to the bags of concrete these also got schlepped into the back yard. The broken concrete is from demolished sidewalks.

There was a preexisting drain that I’d installed about 30 years ago using corrugated and perforated black plastic pipe. When we moved in here, it was just dirt that turned into deep mud when it rained as there was no place for the water to go. I remember excavating the ground, lining the bottom with weed cloth, and carrying and dumping hundreds of bags of gravel in all these soon-to-be paved areas. I cut into the pipe and installed a drain about halfway.

Installing a sprinkler system
Someday they will be sprinklers

Son-in-law is the skilled one here. He set outlines and stakes and made sure we had a 2% slope going to the drain. Then he put up the forms and we inserted foam board into the expansion joints. The initial pours were in a narrow space between the house and the sidewall where there was no room for the mixer. When the time to pour came, we rented a mixer from Home Depot.

I dumped the bags into the mixer and my daughter added the water. When it was mixed, I dumped it into the wheel barrel which he wheeled over to the slab to dump in. Daughter distributed the mix with a hoe and then he set to work finishing it. Repeat about 20 times as fast as we could.

After the pour was complete he went back and did the final finishing and made sure there was a slight dip in the middle for better drainage. Only managed to get two-thirds of this part of the job done A couple of days later we did another pour to complete it.

Left and right forearms

At this point, I’d destroyed myself. My body did not want to perform in any way. I immersed myself in hydrocodone, Tylenol and Meloxicam. Fortunately, there was a break in the work. We had to wait for the solar energy people to install a new electrical panel on that side wall and solar panels on the roof.

The pad for the future shed is on the far right.

Concrete along the southern wall. A gate I slapped together and a concrete landing. The new walkway between the house and the western yard wall

The next magic trick was to demo an existing pad of rotting concrete and move it out of the way. Sledgehammers were the tool of choice. He built the form for the pad a new shed would be built on. I shoveled dirt and broken concrete into the form to bring the ground level to where it needed to be. This time I bowed out of the concrete mixing process. My arms were still bloody and scraped from the last time, so we hired a day laborer a couple of decades younger than me who actually knew what he was doing. I sat inside with an ice pack applied to my lower back.

Two months later and we had final approval on our solar installation. We pour the last slab under our eves. I have recovered enough that I’m able to help again. This time I have refined my technique enough thatI can pour the concrete into the mixer without tearing my arms. up. My back isn’t liking this so much but this time there were only 20 bags to move.

Did I say the ^%$#@! bags of concrete are 90 lbs? The ^%$#@! bags of concrete are 90 lbs. F-ing worse than kitty litter.

Poured concrete is under the eves. The pavers – or will soon be – set level in dirt. Then the gaps between them will be planted with some kind of low growing ground cover.

Now we have to install some French drains around the patio and put in pavers to walk on. Turf is not an option. Seeding the lawn will have to happen in two stages so the dogs will have half the yard all the time to range in. And then we build the shed.

My son-in-law is getting paid for his work. I’m doing it for free. The things a guy will do for his wife!