Introduction: Apron Prep and Pour – Adding a Larger Apron to Our Garage

By Grandmas House DIY
About: Around here you'll find we love to: refinish old furniture, re-purpose old pieces, build it from scratch and continue bettering our home one step at a time!

We ended up doing our concrete in three separate pours in three back to back Saturdays this spring. We started by pouring the slab for our additional garage stall. And then we decided to do our apron in two separate pours to just make it easier for us. Three pours came with the added benefit of “extra” concrete needing a home at the end of each pour. So, that gave us a nice platform in the front of the barn, an additional larger lower step at our front door and a nice big step off of our deck over in our new lower pea gravel deck for us. Just like with the slab Lodi got to work with a hammer drill and A LOT of rebar.

With the absolutely INSANE cost of building materials those 2×6 frames had already been used to do the garage addition slab and, when they’re done here, they’ll be put to work in the building. Lodi has wanted a better apron since he moved in and I never blamed him, my Honda actually bottomed out on the old apron when I pulled into the garage. A nice big apron will give us an awesome place to wash our vehicles, lawn equipment and three places to park. Its just going to be SO nice to have! We had one helper for our garage slab but, for this one, we had two so I was able to do more picture taking and less work – yay me lol.

(Mostly I was just really relieved that Lodi would have better help this time as so much of the slab was all on him.) We also went ahead and dug out and framed in the path I made around the garage a couple of years ago to pour that while we were at it. (Yes it broke my heart a little bit because I put a lot of work into that path omg! But this will be much better!) Just like with the slab Lodi put in a whole pile of rebar using a hammer drill to attach it directly into the existing slab. This is going to guarantee there will be no separation later. Again we also ordered the more expensive (but stronger) cement that comes with fiberglass mixed right in. We again rented a bull float and the cement truck arrived early Saturday morning. We had to pay extra to have it delivered Saturday but we didn’t have a choice in the matter. All hands on deck to do 2/3rds of the apron – gotta love family who will happily work for hot dogs and beer!

Step 1: The Day We Poured!

Meanwhile I made the little cement path my pet project using a cement trowel to make it all nice and smooth. At the advice of our helpers we went ahead and also brushed the apron (and our little path) with a broom for traction especially in the winter time.

With 2/3rds done Lodi again made another call and set up one last Saturday pour to finish it. (Can I just say three Saturdays in a row having to get up at 6am is just cruel and unusual punishment…)

We planned the last section in the center so the only framing we had to add was to the bottom for the last pour, we would be able to use the other two slabs for our scree. It really worked great and my gosh I can’t tell you how glad we were to finally have all of this done! The extra concrete from that last pour went to create a bottom step for the pea gravel lower deck. (Lodi, the absolute wonderful human that he is, let me sleep through the last pour actually. I made up for it though! I may not have got up until noon that day but I still put in a nine hour day in our yard framing out the new pea gravel deck!)

June: the absolute hellish month of insane heat, drought and three weekends in a row of concrete pours to get us a new apron. DAMN. There will be no more years of projects this big or this expensive for us for a LONG time! (IF EVER!) Lastly we had a load of Class 5 (driveway gravel) dropped off and, unfortunately, there was a bit of a driver malfunction… I don’t have a picture of the dirt pile something like 30 feet from where we actually wanted it but… Honestly it was so bad Lodi and I just laughed about it. It made absolutely NO sense. How does 10 yards of dirt end up thirty feet from where we wanted it?

Step 2: Final Completion and Help From a Neighbor

How does “in front of the apron” translate to just drop it off at the end of the driveway… *laughs while sobbing*

We were staring down the barrel of moving all of it by hand with shovels and our yard cart… It was so ridiculous Lodi literally just dove in and started moving it… and wow was it a terrible job. Fortunately for us our neighbor drove by and saw our misery and proceeded to go home and return with his bob cat! Lodi and I cheered until we were hoarse! OUR HERO! He saved us SO MUCH TIME and misery. We absolutely love our new apron, it was a really awesome moment to finally use it. That was a long hot month but we got through it and will appreciate all we did for many years to come.

Yeah, I’m glad that’s over!