When I was a kid I moved into a new build house with my Mum and Dad and little brother, we were so excited to be in a new property.
After the house was built we moved in, me and my brother had are own bedrooms and my mum and dad had theirs.
I have to describe to you the house as it is a little strange, the garage leads into the bedrooms and you have to walk down some steps to get into the living room.
At the front of the house is a little grass garden, not to big and has always been grassed, this is next to a path that leads to the stairs to go down stairs.
The grass on the top of the house has had a problem, it would never grow and it is only now that I have found out why.
My mum a few years back had some work done by a guy who said that he would sort the problem out, and he decided that concreting the edge would solve the problem.
Well it did sort the problem but the my mum has had an unsightly concrete bit on her grass area, as shown.
Would you be happy with this on your land? to top it off over the last few years since it was done it has started cracking too. I'll get more into that in a little bit.
My mum is getting on a bit and is nearly at retirement age, and my step dad has bad knees and cant get down to do work such as sorting out the concrete.
I offered to help, and she jumped at the chance to take me up on the offer of sorting out the front of her house.
After talking it out with her she asked me to take the concrete up and add stones instead. I told her that I wouldn't let her down and when I got the chance I would take it up and get on with it for her.
On fathers day, this sunday that has just gone, I got to work with taking it up and I found lots of problems from the start.
The guy who had done the concrete had laid it on council concrete and mud, and in some places it was about an inch deep.
This would account for the cracking that had happened. I also found that he had used bricks from the original job that he had been hired to do.
After taking up his mess I finally got to the rout of the problem, why my mums grass wouldn't grow.
It turns out that who ever built the house had poured the concrete down had then just dropped the edging into the concrete.
The concrete was nearly a foot deep. and was up high. they has then popped a little bit of mud on top of it to cover up the bodge job that they had done.
I thought that it would be an easy job and it turned out to be one of them jobs where you wished you had never started.
Using only a lump hammer and a concrete chisel I started to smash away at it. it took forever to get through it.
The next steps is to remove the rubble that I have left and sort the edging out before filling in the hole that I have made.
I have however talked to my mum about what she wants doing and she asked me to stone it once it was finished, but to me that would look daft.
I have now managed to take her into returfing the area to how it should have been 30 years ago, this would then make her garden look bigger and it would be easier to care for.
She has gone for my idea. Now if the builders had done their job properly they would have boxed of the concrete before pouring and my mums grass would have grown with no problems.
If the builder who laid the concrete had done his job properly and removed the old concrete before laying his new stuff there would have been no cracks in his work.
It just seems to my that builders just want to take your money and run. It has been a few years since that builder had laid the concrete but if he had done it right it would have stayed down for more years making mylife a little easier than it has been over the past few days sorting it out.
I will do another post to show the finished results at a later date as right now I have to order a skip for to remove the waste that is left over. and then fill in the hole that I have left.
It was good fun, and I talked to everybody who past the house as they seem to show interest in the work I was doing, it was either that or I was driving everybody mad with the consent banging with the hammer. (who knows :D)
