www.ConcreteCottage.com

We had all these extra very heavy, cornice blocks. Dac-Art now makes them more hollow and with slightly different dimensions. We knew that they did not want them back at the Dac-Art plant. We also knew that we didn't want to spend money disposing of them. Mike had the great idea of using them along the wood bulkhead small sea-wall on Little Lagoon. I had long wanted some sort of sidewalk down there. The salt water splashes up and over the wall and kills the grass and then we have erosion.

Dan arranged for Robert Shepler of Shepler's Marine to come out and dig a trench behind our wood bulkhead and place these huge concrete cornices end-to-end. Now, an interesting thing about Robert is that he used to have a really long pony-tail. He cut it off and donated his hair to the organization who makes wigs for kids with cancer. We think he looks handsome with his short summer "do" now.

The funny thing was that the first block that they set, just happened to be upside down. None of us noticed because it did not have imbedded metal lift handles or rings. Turning it around gave us a larger flat surface for our 'sidewalk'. They switched it around and made quick work of digging out and setting about 2/3 rds of the cornices to go the 100+ feet across the waterfront. Since we set these things behind the bulkhead, and not out in the water, we didn't have to bother getting any permits from Corp of Engineers.

You can see on the end how the cornice blocks have the sloped side facing my yard with dirt pushed up underneath them. This way they will not have a tendency to want to fall out into the water.

Robert Shepler and his men, Charles, Eddy, Bobby and Robert were done by mid-afternoon on the second day. While the back-hoe was here, they also removed some concrete spills from the tight west property side yard.

Robert placed them right along the driveway to make it as simple as possible to get them hauled off. Mike told me that the reason that they were there in the first place was that one time the concrete pump truck line has a hard chunk of concrete stuck in it and they had to disassemble the thing and clear it out and meanwhile the pumper guy just dumped the contents of the pump tube over the side of the wall. Construction makes for messes you don't count on in the beginning. I hate these big plops of concrete because they kill the grass underneath... totally.

Remember to always stick a piece of scrap rebar in the concrete when it is wet so you have some way to lift it to get it out of your way later.

Robert made quick work of this job and he had to bring every cornice thru the opening between our guest house and the new house. Remember to always allow access on your property, especially if you have waterfront.

On the first day, Robert brought the cornices half way down and set them between the buildings as you can see here.  We were getting delivery of a 20 ft storage container first thing in the morning and we needed the cornices out of the way.