"Edwin Pawlowski" wrote in message
. com...

"I Love Lucy" wrote in message

I rebooted and looked up the error and seem to be able to read messages
again.

The price you have sounds reasonable. Have you ever worked concrete?

No, I haven't, never thought much about it until I took a lot of
photographs of men doing the concrete work at the end of repairing a
water or sewer line. It was neat how they coordinated it all and the
work flow. I think the concrete part of that job was easy compared to
this. The hardest part I saw on the street repair was the guy hand
digging in the bottom of the trench.

It is
heavy and hard work.

Yes, I know it is. My son and some of the younger guys in my family are
strong, but they lack the experience. The guy with the experience I
fear I can't depend on. The one bid I have was recommended to me by a
neighbor who happens to be a neighbor to us both.

Doing the steps as a starter is a rather risky way to
learn.

Those would be out of the question. Any explanation except in the
simplest terms would be over my head. I just wanted some input from
disinterested third parties.

Having all the concrete delivered at one time can be tough unless
you have people that know what they are doing in place.

I would know when things were ready to pour, but there'd probably have
to be two, three or more to work all those spots with one delivery.
Maybe the bidder was figuring on reparing the broken corners separately
by hand mixing.

Is all of this
accessible from the truck? Do you have to wheelbarrow some of to the
slab?

I think not. I can't think of any way to get the mixed cement to the
slab except by brute strength or rigging up some kind of pulley device.
Maybe there is something besides a wheelbarrow they use. Even if they
pushed a wheelbarrow from the alley which would be a lesser grade, it
would be further and there is an incline to deal with, maybe 30 degrees.
That terrace is almost 45 degrees by my guesstimate.

Can you do those corners while everything else is going on? The
corners should be hand mixed. Just bring home a couple of those 80#
bags and you are ready to go.

I couldn't lift an 80# bag, could hardly drag it. I'd have to get
smaller ones. With some mentoring, I could probably cobble together a
form, but think it is not worth it to save $150; I'd have to buy a few
things so I wouldn't save that much.


Very heavy material, limited working time, no easy way to do it over
if you goof up, no way to store mixed concrete if you run into a
problem mid-pour,

I've been reading things to that effect. At least whatever is done, I'm
not going into this completely blind like I have placed my complete
trust in other contractors to do the right thing. Too many times they
do only the minimum and don't even tell you you really should do it this
way even it it is more work for them and costly for me. I won't say I
was screwed, but if you don't inform yourself ahead of time as best you
can, you can end up with trouble like I did with my combination storm
windows and kitchen cupboards. I can't get at parts of the glass even
if I slide the glass and screens every which way. I just used that for
an example. So many things have turned out that way, and these were
people recommended to me by people who dealt with these things all the
time. Just about every thing I have had done, I have ended up with
problems, and I don't want it to happen with this job. Won't go into
the kitchen cupboards, a complete disaster, can't even remember the name
of the guy who did those. Some of that wasn't his fault; some of it
was.

. . . . Your decision. I'd pay the money.

I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and spend the money. I
know it is hard work, the hot weather is coming, and I didn't mean to
make light of any of that.

Thanks very much for your input. That is a lot of money to me with some
other things that I'm having done; I know in other parts of the country
you may not be able to get all that done for anything close. I have
several things going right now because I put them off for so long and
can't stand looking at it or living with it any more if I don't have to.
The back steps have been like that for several years now, a little worse
every year. I'm used to them, but others aren't. I could get along
without them, but I'm afraid someone will fall because I think they
have become dangerous. The rest apart from missing hand rails and
possible water drainage toward the house is mostly cosmetic. It would
probably look nicer to repour the whole front slab, but it would take
too much to explain why it wouldn't make that much difference overall.