Brick paver job in Santa Maria

Today we finished a 300 sq. ft. brick paver job in Santa Maria. It was in a backyard and everything had to be hauled in and out by wheelbarrow. The owner, a very patient man, watched us struggle throughout the project. The first step to this project was a challenge. We had to remove a concrete strip that was about 12″ by 12″ by 20 ft. long and it was impossible with my jackhammer. We had less than 1/4 of the concrete out by 1 pm. So I went to Quinn Rental on Betteravia Rd and rented a large generator with an air compressor powered jackhammer. This did the trick in 30 minutes. I was loading some broken concrete pieces in my truck bed when my back went out. I could feel a little bit of a strain but didnt think it was serious. I took it easy the rest of the day but the next morning I couldn’t get out of bed. It took about 20 minutes for me to walk to the bathroom and I almost passed out from the pain. It took 2 visits to the chiropractor, a professional massage and 3 days before I could walk without any pain pills. I’ve never been this bad before. Guess I’m just getting older. Thanks dad, for giving me a brother and a sister. My sister gave me the back massage and my brother was able to go to my job site and help supervise my employees for two days while they dug out the soil and put in the road base and sand. The rest of the job didn’t exactly go smoothly either. We hit a conduit with the jackhammer and cut the electrical inside. We knew it was there beforehand. There was just no avoiding it with the jackhammer. It was actually encased in the bottom part of the concrete slab. One of my new, spanish speaking employees put diesel in my plate compactor and was compacting the road base with black smoke spewing out from the compactor before I could stop him. Of course I wasn’t able to re-start it after draining the diesel and putting fresh gas in it. So it was back to the rental store again. My brick was delivered but the forklift broke down so we unloaded 2 and a half pallets by hand.  We laid all the brick and made the cuts. It took a day and a half to make all the cuts and clean up. It usually only takes a day. There were many difficult cuts to make and trying to lay brick under fences and around posts has got to be the most frustrating thing to do.  Every day was hard on this job. Even though I’ve been in this business for 20 years, I learn new things with every job. I told my daughter, “I bet there’s not too many kids your age who can say that their mother put down 300 sq. ft. of brick today.” The brick patio did turn out very nicely.

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