Joining the Masons

"I'm not a stonemason, but I play one on TV."

One side effect of converting our mud steps into a mud ramp is that it exposed a previously buried part of our neighbor's construction. As you can see in the photo, our neighbor on the right has a set of concrete steps running alongside our homemade ramp. The property line runs between the two, basically on the left side of the low concrete wall. No, there is no easement.

By digging out our steps and smoothing it into a continuous ramp, we lowered the soil so much that it exposed the unfinished side of that low concrete wall. In fact, we almost undermined it. When their wall was poured, the wooden forms only went down to then-ground level. Now we've lowered that by a foot or so, exposing the bare dirt under their wall. What to do?

We can't leave it as-is, because rain and weather would eventually erode the soil under their stairs. We need a way to shore it up. But spreading concrete vertically is... well, it's impossible.

Back in 2013, I made my own wooden forms and started pouring ready-mix concrete to fill in the spaces under their wall. That worked okay for a while, but I could only pour it about three-quarters of the way up. After that, there wasn't enough room to squeeze new concrete in underneath their existing wall. So I left a gap, albeit a much smaller gap than before.

This week, we made a big push toward a final fix. If I can't pour concrete up the side of their wall, maybe I can brick it in. So we took some unused pavers and started stacking them up and fixing them in place with mortar. With some cutting and fitting, we were able to fill in most of the big remaining areas. We've still got some small gaps to fill, but that's a project for another day.

Anyone have any ideas?

Ramping Up

It's an uphill battle. We started making a ramp from the sidewalk to our backyard five years ago, and today we're still working on it.

Back in 2010 when we moved in, there was a set of rough steps from the backyard down to the street. They were just packed mud held together with some rotting wooden boards. It wasn't pretty, or very safe, and I'm sure the person who created the steps didn't expect them to last more than a few months. But years later, here we are.

Kathy and I decided back in 2013 to dig out the mud steps and smooth it into a ramp. How hard can it be, right? So we dug and we filled and we measured, and we re-dug, and so on until we got more or less the ramp we wanted. Nice! Now it was much easier to roll the garbage cans out to the curb instead of bumping them down the steps. It was also a lot easier to bring stuff up, like when we bought a new refrigerator. The ramp was especially useful once we started outfitting the downstairs commercial kitchen. No way that giant range would have come up those old muddy steps!

As an added bonus, the house is now wheelchair-accessible. It's not strictly ADA-approved, but it definitely works, and it's much better than anything that was here before.

But a mud ramp is still a mud ramp, so we "paved" it with rubber tiles. Home Depot had some outdoor tiles made from recycled rubber, and they were exactly half the width of our ramp, so two of them side by side fit perfectly. So we bought a couple dozen and flopped them down into the dirt. Much better.

Except that when it rained, the mud washed over the brand new tiles. And when it rained hard, it would make channels under the tiles and undermine the whole thing. By the middle of winter, the ramp was a muddy mess again. So what's Plan B?

We decided to pour a layer of concrete under the tiles to harden the surface and prevent rainwater from washing everything away. That meant lifting up all the tiles, digging out a few inches of dirt, putting down chicken wire to reinforce the concrete, and then mixing and pouring the concrete -- on a slope. Be sure to mix it thick or it will all run downhill.

Once that was done, we flopped all the rubber tiles back in place. Ta-da!

Now we've got a new problem. The tiles slip and skid on the new concrete surface, so we need a way to hold them in place. After experimenting with a few different adhesives, we settled on one that seems to work bonding rubber to concrete, doesn't wash away in the rain, and doesn't smell too terrible. (Well, two out of three.)