Sidewalk Deconstruction & Reconstruction – Day 1

At the crack of 7:30am this morning, the sidewalk project got underway. For many moons, I wondered whether this was going to come together. With the impending Chicago Winter and more free time of my own, the project jumped to a start once we had a new contractor for our curious project.

 Deconstructing Sidewalk

The job basically entails swapping materials from one place to another. As much as possible, materials will be reused to create a better sidewalk where there was grass, and better growing space where there was a troublesome sidewalk.

The pre-cut with a dry saw and final cut with a wet-saw

My concrete guy, who we will call Chris, said to me "Oh, this is not a concrete job, this is a landscaping job." We'll see about that. Every project comes with some surprise, good or bad. So far, we've discovered a pre-existing sidewalk used as the underlayment below the existing sidewalk. Whatever kind of job they want to call it, I'm just glad to be paying someone else to do all of the cutting, lifting, and hauling.

 Placing the new sidewalk pieces (stepping-stones)

The job:
Saw-cut the existing concrete sidewalk at the expansion joints and half-way in between.

Use 3'x5' slabs (now made of two half pieces) as Dr. Seuss-ish oversized stepping-stones.

Stepping-stones will outline the newly expanded growing area, allowing the growing area to extend all the way to the wall of the house.

Growing Area will include a native plant rain garden and food-production garden.

 End of Day 1

Here are two bonus images, showing the dust cloud created by the saw-cutting. Dust cloud = Bad, Cool pictures = Good!

Facing East in the morning

 Facing West in the afternoon

See you again tomorrow!