Busy Birthday Weekend

***pic heavy post!***

This past weekend was a whirlwind! Mom and Dad came up to Denver for a visit. We were celebrating my birthday and Mother's Day a little bit early. Mom also brought several pieces of furniture to store in my garage prior to the Paris Street Market. Dad wanted to pour a step in our garage and I wanted to refinish a few pieces of furniture of my own. It was busy to say the least.

I'll do a full post on the furniture pieces but here's a bit more about the step. The step leading out to our garage from the house had a problem....the floor below it had sunk, so there was a REALLY LARGE drop. Brent and I were sort of used to it, but everyone who stepped down got a big surprise. So we needed to fix it!

Eight bags of Quickcrete. Looked like a lot, but surprisingly we needed all but one of the bags.

 

My dad loves to study projects. He also loves to engineer ways to build things. He had been planning this for weeks.



 

Building the supports and the frame.

Here you can see the large drop off and the gap between the single step and the floor.

 
These were the ingenious supports Dad dreamed up for the frame. We needed something strong so the cement wouldn't just ooze out.

Some of the important tools. We were rocking and rolling at this point!

 

 

This was just a small part of the mixing process. Mom and I were the lucky ones who got to mix the Quickcrete and lug it over to the step. Dad took care of smoothing it out.

 

Working with Quickcrete was DUSTY. Thank goodness for masks.  

Here Dad is using a tool he built called a "darbie." It is very smooth and levels out all the concrete.
 

 

It is SO wonderful to have two easy steps into the house instead of one giant step.

PS...we tried to put Porter's paw print in the step, but we waited too long. It was too hard to make an imprint!

Saturday evening we went to one of my favorite local Italian restaurants to eat a glutinous meal. (Although Mom and I did share ours, so it wasn't quite as bad as it could have been!) Even if you don't like eggplant parmesan, I would dare you to try this one. It's been known to make converts of eggplant haters!

Sunday afternoon we smoked ribs and completed a few more projects. My dad proclaimed this would be his choice for a dying meal.

Now here's a little preview of the other pieces of furniture we refinished. I'll post more this week. I can't WAIT to show you how these turned out.

Hope you're having a great week!
Karli