Finishing Concrete

 So last summer I blew out a disc in my back by pouring a concrete, required surgery to fix it in September. Finally I got around to finishing the sidewalk, and it took a lot of the same culprits that led to the back pain. I still have back pain, but it's not nearly as bad as before the microdiscectomy I just have to be more cautious about lifting. To finish off this job, I had to run the tiller around part of the gravel driveway, excavate where the sidewalk hits the gravel driveway, and finally pour some more gravel.

Before - leaves, rocks, no diggity

This should look like a real parking space

I filled in with some planer shavings just to add organic material to the tire troughs

Mixer is ready to do some work

Rebar is in place

This time I used 50 lb bags instead of the 80lb bags that pinched by back

Mid-pour

Each square takes about 800 lbs of concrete

I finished pouring the next day, 48 of those 50 lbs bags all in

Then I spread another 1500 lbs of gravel over the area

This project has been a long time coming. You can see most of the sidewalk in that last picture, I started working on it at the beginning of April 2020 and finally finished at the end of January 2021. I still need to fix up the other side of the driveway, but after finishing the porch project and moving through all of the front yard landscaping it feels really nice to have this one under the belt. Now I need to move to the other side of the driveway, remove some plants, clear some space, and relocate part of a fence.