Blog-O-Chibi

I really did have every intention of getting back into the blogging habit, but a whole lot of stuff kept getting in the way. After Hawaii, we've been busy in the back yard doing some landscaping projects (some pictures will come up someday in the not too distant future I hope). When we replaced our fence a few years back, we kept the old redwood boards, and now we have put them to good use. We built an herb spiral and several planters. Mrs. Chibi has become quite the afficianado of power tools. This past weekend I rented a jackhammer to bust up some concrete (which will be used to make a large raised terrace for our future bamboo grove) with my buddy Mr. Anderson. We were crusing along. The slab that was where the old garage stood before it collapsed was old and thin. We just used a big digging bar and a sledgehammer to break those pieces up. Easy. The next section to tackle was two strips of concrete that was supposed to be a driveway. It was a bit thicker and had reinforcing wire throughout. Much tougher. For each strip we first had to jackhammer out a small section so that we could start prying up big pieces and then using the jackhammer on them. When concrete lays on the ground, the ground ends up absorbing a lot of the energy of the hammer blows and so what ends up happening is a hole in the concrete. But if you lift it up first as you make the hole, a chunk will crack right off. So while the driveway was more difficult, we still made pretty good time busting it up. Next was a big slab that we discovered was reinforced concrete on top of old concrete. Two layers! Now things got more difficult. It was next to impossible to get the pry bar in between the layers and just jackhammering the slab only made holes. At that point, we were pretty beat and gave up for the day. Some tough work lies ahead...