Front Sidewalk Demolition
2005.08.07
This morning, Nate and I demolished this front sidewalk to nowhere, which I assume used to lead to steps at the front porch. We started out using the chisel and small sledge to knock off a corner of the middle section of sidewalk. It would be slow going doing it all that way. After we had some of that removed though, I was able to fit a long crowbar (or prybar if that’s what you call it) underneath. Then using a chunk of concrete as a fulcrum, I lifted up almost the entire three-foot-square section. This caused the concrete to break with far less effort as Nate hit it with the big sledge. I guess that physics class in college was useful for real life after all. An initial hit wasn’t enough to break the slab into small pieces, so we continued lifting them up and smashing them with the sledgehammer.
After a while, we switched places, and Nate pried the slabs up while I hit them. It’s kind of therapeutic to smash concrete, I have to say.
In under an hour, we had all the concrete removed and piled up in the yard. Hm… now what do I do with all that rubble? I decided that for the time being, we’d pile it up in back next to the garage. At this point, a wheelbarrow seemed like a rather useful tool to have.
So we took a break and drove to Harbor Freight, the dollar store of tools and hardware. If you ever need a cheap tool, that you only expect to need once or twice before it breaks, this is the place to go. But somewhat to my dismay, the wheelbarrow they had was $50, metal, and unassembled.
I figured that wasn’t a very good deal, so we drove to Home Depot to see what they had. Home Depot had three different sizes, most of them fiberglass. They had both fiberglass and metal in the same size as Harbor Freight, already assembled, for the same price. I ended up getting a somewhat smaller one, with fiberglass body, four cubic foot capacity, assembled, for $40.
Back at the house, we loaded up the wheelbarrow for several trips around the house to dump off the concrete in a pile, along with the rubble from last weekend’s demolition. Ever the charmer, Nate commandeered four gradeschool kids riding their bikes and scooters nearby to help out.
