September 1, 2009

Mess-o-cinderblocks

There are certain advantages to living in small town. One great advantage is that everyone knows someone...someone who does driveways, heaters, recycles old cinder blocks for free...ect. When we applied for our demolition permit Pete made an off hand remark to the town official about having to dispose of all the cinder block. Right away he got handed the business card of a semi local business named Winzingers that takes old cinder block for free. F-R-E-E.


We marveled at this potential good news, because free disposal of the blocks could mean considerably less money for the disposal portion of the garage budget. Considering that the local dump is somewhere around $70 a ton for construction disposal and goodness knows how many trips it would have take to get all the blocks over there.


Since I'm a little phone phobic Pete called over to Winzingers to inquire about the process and a potential dumpster rental. Fairly simple, you can haul your own load over between 7am- Noon on Saturdays OR arrange for a dumpster delivery/pick up in one week's time to the tune of $214. (pretty sure dumpster rental rates vary due to locations) It was a no brainer decision. Rent the dumpster for a great price and have the ease of only loading it once. Wave bye as dumpster leaves driveway. Blocks all get recycled for FREE.


Saturday morning we arrived at the Wee house under an overcast sky and an empty dumpster just waiting to be filled with cinder blocks. You can see how little our trailer seems in comparison. and how many more blocks there were.


We loaded the dumpster for about 2 hours and tried to work out the best to stack everything. It was evident pretty fast that the dumpster wasn't going to be able to hold everything. I guessed that we'd be short by about 15%-20%.

Me, checking out the bricks. I was caught looking at them a few times. Maybe I was hopeful my mind control skills were about to kick in and I could just will the brick to move. After getting our stride down with loading the bricks we decided that a "quick" dump run should and could be snuck in. Saturdays are our only days for getting to the dump and we still had a small pile of shed rubbish to get thrown out. Two hours later the trailer was loaded, driven over to the dump, weighed (.85 tons), unloaded and we were on our way home for a late lunch.

Returning in the late afternoon we set a goal to work until it got too dark to see. We worked our behinds off, loading and loading tons of blocks. Our super awesome neighbor showed up with a pair of work gloves and pitched in. And by pitched in I mean helped us more than you can imagine. He also carried full blocks over two at a time for a good hour! and he gave us a suggestion for loading that surely gave us another 10% more room in the dumpster- stack a layer of block then sledgehammer down to fill in all the empty spaces. Repeat.

Blocks ready for smashing...

and smashed...

Eventually the sun set and the moon rose, darkness fell pretty fast and we packed it up for the night. Very exhausted, but also very enthused about the amount of work that got done.

4 comments:

  1. I am crazy impressed, we do a fair amount of diy but seeing all those blocks makes me want to cry

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  2. Kari, there was the promise of a chilled bottle of wine at our favorite BYO sushi place for a late dinner. So we had motivation!

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  3. That's pretty good motivation! I saw you live in NJ, I'm in Cape May County, I guess you're up north somewhere?

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  4. Whoa. I do not envy you with that job. I'm with Kari - I would have cried. lol

    :)
    R

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