Lower Walkway
This post will be sort of a long pictorial showing how we started the finish work on the lower walkway. The final touches are not done yet, but you’ll get the sense of the scope of what it means to create a raised walkway with fill and concrete, and how important it is to have knowledgeable concrete workers doing the job.
The Before
So, here we are in the before. In the very foreground is the rough cut soil that is thankfully decomposed granite. Still, that all had to be finished. There is a good 7′ of clearance between the bottom of the walkway and the underside of the plank going from the lane to the main deck.
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Here’s another photo that shows the same scene from above. Notice how the side of the house on the left is quite exposed and how there’s a pretty steep dip down to the driveway.
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Curved retaining wall
This was the first retaining wall the Palomino brothers put in. It has a lovely arched bow to it,with a broom-finished cap that reaches to the level of the walkway when finished.
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We couldn’t put the fill in until the entire retaining wall was complete along the entire driveway, but you can see the black line that Chris made on the retaining wall on the left. It indicates the level of the walkway when complete.
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More of the retaining wall is completed, so we were able to get the fill in. You can get a real sense of the change between the photo above and below. Earlier, the wall on the left reached up to my chest, but at this level, it barely reached my knees.
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Tying in the Curved Access Steps
The plan was to have the walkway retaining wall die into a set of curving steps, which would serve as a tie-in for three separate levels: the access lane, the walkway, and the driveway itself. At this stage, this was an idea only in Chris’ mind and on paper. He never did a complete 3D rendering of this idea, so everyone pretty much just followed what he instructed to do.
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In this photo, the retaining wall is complete and the cap is formed up and connected to the curved bender boards. The concrete cap marks the level fo the walkway when complete.
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This photo is shows the view from below, before the cap was formed, but it gives you a sense of how much fill would be added to complete the level.
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Forming up the Steps
The work for the steps begins in earnest, with rebar, bender boards and braces getting tied in and ready for pouring.
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Colored Concrete
The colored concrete was delivered by truck and formed up in one day. I picked out all the colors for the concrete and for the mold release powders. The idea is that the end result will coordinate with the trim on the house. Here, you are seeing concrete in the color "taupe," believe it or not. Concrete lightens considerably. And we’re not done with the colors at this point.
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Stamping Concrete
In this photo, you’re looking at the guys stamping out the concrete using a hard rubber concrete stamp. Two other colors that I picked out, light charcoal and "nutmeg," are first cast on by hand on top of the formed (but still wet) concrete. These colored agents act both as concrete coloring and as a mold release. They were stamped in and left untouched for two days to work into the base color.
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The rainy day does a nice job of showing the finished steps, where you can see the colors coming together in a nice blend. You can see to the right how the walkway, when finished, will connect nicely with the main broadest step, and how the top step connects with the lane above. The bottom-most step will be at the same level of the driveway when it is poured. The bands in the driveway act as breaks for the fields in the center, which will be the same color as the concrete and stamped in the same way.
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The black concrete ties in with the railing, while the brown fields will pick up the trim of the house. At this point, we’re hoping that the fields of the driveway and walkway will be the same patterned concrete, but we had to submit a plan change to the county for approval on using concrete instead of paving stones. The photo below shows the before, just to get a comparison.
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