jonsippel.com

So I’ve owned my house for 3 years now, and for 2.8 of those, the front porch has been falling off. I’ve known about the problem since my home inspection, but up until last summer it was ignorable (sorta). In August I got off my ass and had a few contractors come out to give me estimates. Of the 4 contractors I called, 2 gave me estimates – roughly $8k and $16k (!). The difference was enough that I still had no idea where to begin, so I put off the project some more.

Fast forward to a few months ago: The porch is making its problems known again, so I get in touch with a few different contractors. One in particular is very quick to get back to me, and I end up with an estimate two days after my first call, and a signed contract the next day. They come out and demolish the old concrete porch and steps, build forms, lay rebar, and pour a new porch – all in just 4 days.

Of course, they also managed to destroy a large portion of my lawn and break my driveway (both in the course of backing the concrete truck up to the porch). They filled in the trench with topsoil and reseeded, so that was fine. They also offered to cut out the broken section of driveway and repair it with new cement. My driveway is 21 years old, and looks every day of it. The broken section was about 3′ x 10′, roughly 15% of the surface. I decided that having that much new concrete surrounded by the rest of the old stuff would look bad, so I took their other offer of a discounted entirely new driveway.

We had a few weeks of cold weather where they couldn’t get started, but eventually they did. Two days later I had a brand new driveway and front walk. Perfect!

Except (you knew that was coming, right?) after they removed the tarps that were keeping the new concrete warm overnight, I noticed one area towards the bottom corner that didn’t look as dry or set up as the rest. Keeping an eye on it over the course of a week, it never dried completely. The concrete eventually cured, but not properly – you could chip it away by hand, and the texture was cratered and bumpy; not the “light broom finish” that had been applied initially.

It took the contractor a few weeks to get back out to my house to take a look. The water source had since dried up (or found another place to leak to) and it had actually snowed a bit the night before – everything was wet but the puddle that had collected at the foot of my driveway was no longer there. The contractor immediately offered to replace the concrete, but took some persuading to actually investigate the water source.

As it sits now, they’re calling “Miss Utility” to come out and mark the location and depth of the water/sewer lines on my property. Stay Tuned!