After a year of planning, the remodel has begun. The crew from Urban Escapes pulled up Thursday morning.  After a a quick planning session, they pulled out the the sledge hammers and jack hammers and went to work. Before I dive into the the details I just want to say I’ve really enjoyed working with Terri leading up the this project, and these last two days her crew has been just as great!

They began by breaking down the side walls of the upper pond so they could get the backhoe into our lot. On Thursday they focused on the rocks and walls around the back of the pond. They carefully piled the natural sandstone rocks out of the way, and quickly broke up and hauled away the concrete.

3 feet of concrete!!!

Unfortunately I had to go to work today and I missed all the surprises! They made great progress today and the pond looks a lot more like a hole in ground (and a blank canvas). There were a couple surprises today. The first was that the bog garden in the upper pond was only three feet deep. The previous home owner mentioned it was four feet deep and that is what I have been telling everyone. The second surprise was just how much concrete was under the waterfall. What I assumed would be maybe a cinder block or two thick is almost three feet of solid concrete! The crew made a valiant effort to break it out with jackhammers, smaller demo hammers, and the backhoe, but they had to change tactics.  They reserved a chain saw capable of cutting concrete from a local rental shop and called it a day around 4 p.m.