Goodwrench's CyberRanch

The Carport

The Physical CyberRanch

Projects:
Our first projects have been enlarging and improving the driveway, and getting a carport built.

The Construction:
We decided to widen the existing driveway. This took cement work.

After the area was laid out, the grass and topsoil was stripped. Wooden forms were then placed, and rebar was laid down and tied together.

I'm sure I must have been aware when we decided to do the cement work, that it was going to be charged in addition to the price bid on the car port. The part that was really stupid of me was that I got neither a written or verbal bid on the additional cement work. I think these pictures show pretty clearly the size of the two cement strips to widen the parking area. They also show the work that was involved in pouring them. Lets just say that when I was given the final bill on 10/11/98, what I saw made me too upset to even want to bother posting the rest of the pictures I have of the construction and finished product. How anyone could decide that this cement work should cost $1,880 is really beyond my comprehension. I only had enough money to pay the bid price on the carport plus the $180 additional for four translucent skylights. I guess I'll have no recourse but to pay what I was billed for the cement work, but it sure doesn't look like I can possibly afford to have Jim Pierce do any of the enlarging of my shop that I was hoping to begin in a few months. This really is a disappointment, but I guess I've learned a valuable lesson. No matter how trustworthy a contractor appears, I will never change a plan without getting a written bid for the change. When I spoke with him later he said that he charged $ 4.00 a square foot which was his usual charge for cement work. It's too bad the insurance companies won't let doctors charge like that...

11/15/98 Because we've had a few more days of rain, I discovered something else that wish had been done differently in building this car port. The builder left about a 2 inch gap between the end of the house roof and the start of the carport roof. This really lets a lot of water in over a couple of days and makes a real mess of anything underneath. I'm hoping that I can just get some more of the roof material and add an overlapping piece to fix this problem

4/26/99 We just got about 2.25" of much needed rain today. The problem is that it shows the culvert placed across where the new driveway turns off of the original one was set too high. Now the water backs up a third of the way down the driveway because it can't run through the pipe and on down to the pond. When he first put it in, it was way too narrow for a truck and a trailer to make the turn. When we told him about this, he rushed out and put another half a pipe on each end of the existing one and spread more driveway gravel over it. Now what would have just been a pain in the rear to fix has become a real nightmare.