I don’t think I’ve ever written about cement before. You might not think you have any interest in cement, and believe me, I didn’t either. But I feel smarter about it now, and you can never tell when being smarter about cement will come in handy.  Anyway, it’s part of my life and I have to write to relieve the tension…

 I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to get cement to replace the gravel patches in the driveway. I drove into a couple yards where I saw cement trucks and big piles of sand coming and going, but evidently regular people like me do not just come into these places and order a few yards of cement. In one there was no office, only huge trucks honking at me to get out of the way. In the other, there was an office but the person there had no idea what prices were or whether my project was something they would stoop to do.

I finally called a contractor, one whose ad said no job was too big OR too small. Most people would have done this first, I know. The initial quote for the work was $1200, just from my description of it, adjustments to come with the final proposal. I don’t think he was talking about adjusting it down. I am so tired of everything costing in thousands of dollars. Whatever happened to hundreds? I keep hoping to save money by doing some of the work myself which is why I don’t call contractors except as a last resort.

My friend who was pressure washing the house (it’s a Florida thing), heard me gasping about the price, and immediately started talking me into hiring his cousin instead. “We do it tomorrow, if you like. Less than that, and we do it tomorrow.” And to be truthful, it was good to hear that it would cost less, but hearing that it would be done tomorrow was the clincher. I cancelled the other contractor and hired Higinio.

When people are trying to help me get jobs done at a good price, I always end up feeling sorry for them when unexpected things come up. I think it took a little longer than they had anticipated for them to remove all the gravel that had been put in the holes. Under the gravel were huge tree roots, the troublemakers that had ruined the previous cement, and they had to be chopped out. I wish I could say they had some handy machines to help them, but no, it was muscles and an ax. They worked nearly a whole day prepping for the cement, which was due to come at 5 pm, only to find it delayed until the next morning. In addition to feeling sorry for them sweating all day in the heat, now I had to feel sorry for them coming back another day.

At 9 am a huge truck was waiting at our drive. I held my breath as it maneuvered down our narrow drive and through our yard, backing up to the holes. It was interesting to watch the truck combine everything on site and slide it into place. Interesting also to watch how the men floated it, troweled it – all those things that they do to make it look good. The holes were filled, the tools were washed off, and the truck was pulling away. It was then, making a tight turn that the wheels ran off the cement drive and cracked it in a brand new place. I heard the pop and saw the edge sink, along with my hopes of not spending too much money on this job.

And then I felt sorry, because the men had to saw away the broken edge of the drive, remove the concrete chunks, build a form, place the wire and mix 11 sacks of Sak-crete by hand to do the repair. Oh cement, you are so much work.

It is now done. One more job crossed off the list in getting the oneacrewoods ready for sale.  It ended up costing what the original contractor had bid but was done much sooner. It was good to learn about mixing cement by hand – actually not too hard, kind of like mixing pancake batter. I think I could do small cement projects if I had to…  if I could lift the 80 lb. sacks of Sak-crete.