Entry Construction

Here I post progress pictures of the entry project just to show the work as it moved along.  It was a hard project for me.   Luckily I had some help.  Thank you Benny and thanks to Don and Barry too. 

This was the demolition.  You can see the underlying structure is gone.  I guess "pressure treated lumber" has it's life span and twenty years is it!

This is the starting course of the first (lower) rock wall.

Note the concrete used between the inner and outer stone wall to give the wall its strength.  Some of these stones weighed about 200+ pounds.  It was a challenge to get them into place. 

After the demo came the construction of the stone retaining walls.  Some help from my neighbor with a backhoe- instrumental in preparing the areas for these structural walls.   Benny and I pulled all the stone from the woods and he helped me with the wall construction as well.

Floating forms over the rockwalls.  6x6 10ga. wire and 1/2" reinforcing bars throughout.


I took a little lesson from the "stitch and glue" technique of boatbuilding to form out the curved face of the slab.  Tie-wire on 12" centers stitches the form together.  It worked well.

I formed out the 18 inch "border" concrete pour directly over the stone walls.  Steel reinforced and "keyed" into the future slab with rebar.  This actually was more labor intensive than building the rock walls.

This was the first band of concrete I poured.  I am NOT a concrete finisher so the resulting job was not as 'professional' as I would have liked.  Still, it was in character with the stone and the concept that I had in mind.

These photos show Benny mixing and placing the lower border concrete.You can see the upper landing border has already been placed and stripped.

The second (lower band) and my boy Benny was a life saver on the mixing.



Above you can see some of the bogus concrete (already hardened in the bag) that I bought.  I hauled the sixty pound bags, ten at a time in my VW.  We mixed and placed about 20+ bags for lower border pour.  I mixed about the same for the upper.  I had to do it myself as Benny wasn't available that day.  I think it took me a week to recover.

After placing the borders we filled in the slabs (top, middle and bottom landings) with 4 yards of redimix concrete off a truck. 
This photo will give you an idea about how the concrete turned out.  My skills at concrete finishing leave a bit to be desired.  I hope the overall project is pleasing.