Too old for this much fun

[julian abram]

I have a small shop (16x20) so full of tools there's hardly any room to work. Decided to build a 16x20 addition. With so many obstacles in the back yard I decided to spare the heavy equipment and dig it myself with minimal impact. With a front tine tiller, pick, breaker bar and shovels I completed the dig in 5 days working a few hours each evening. Yes, I am nuts, not sure I would do that again. I purchased one of those $295 Lowe's concrete mixers last week. On Wednesday installed the rebar and grade pins. From noon Wednesday until 8pm I mixed and poured all 84 bags by myself. Amazing how may bags it takes to cover much area, 84 bags only covered about 2/3 of the 72 linear feet of footings. I figure it will take a little more that another pallet to finish. Not bad week's labor for 62 yo geezer, wife thinks I'm crazy, but it's a lot more enjoyable than setting at a desk all day.

[Tom M King]

I'll be 65 next month, and having fun doing this for a living www.HistoricHousePreservation.com, which is work every day too, to give you an idea of where I'm coming from when I say:

I'm impressed!!!

[Jim Andrew]

I have set up and poured a few basements, and seems to me the footings are the hardest part. I'm 63. I just finished building a mile of fence, yesterday.

[Myk Rian]

I'm 66 and would rather hire it out.

[Chris Damm]

I'm 66 and learned a long time ago that if you don't do concrete work on a regular basis you should hire it done!
Buying concrete in bags is a very expensive way to buy concrete.

[Jim Matthews]

You're not crazy.

If you're mixing by hand and pouring in August,
I will revise my opinion.

You probably saved - what? - two grand DIY?

If it falls down, or you get localized seismic activity,
she's got an "I told you so" in her back pocket.

Everybody wins with this one.

[Moses Yoder]

I remember as a young boy, maybe 10 years old, shoveling cement into a mixer. My brother shoveled the gravel and between us we added water. Two other brothers wheeled the barrow and dad shoveled and troweled. We had a few cousins for dad's assistants. This was a 32 x 40 basement addition. We did the footers and had some help to lay blocks, then later we mixed and poured for the floor. It had a room in the front and the main had a wall down the center so we mixed and poured the floor in 3 Saturdays. I still think dad was an undiagnosed bipolar. We built that in the later '70s. I remeber dad saying shortly before he passed that they borrowed $2500 to build that addition onto the house.