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Jose and his crew arrived at 8am sharp yesterday morning, ready to demo and get going on the concrete work (we'll be installing the paver walkway, repairing the fence and slowly landscaping ourselves). They managed to demo the stairs completely by end of day. Even though we have a basement door we can access off the alley, Jose was kind enough to set us up with a temporary set of 'stairs' in front, although I don't think Charlevoix is quite nimble enough to use these... 
The stone and brick walls, serving as supports/bearing walls for the original stairs, turned out to be in worse shape than we thought. Both need major tuckpointing. Originally, we thought the stones, located in these walls, were quite structurally sound and solid. Turns out, this is not the case. The stone gets more veneer-like (thinner and smaller) in size, as the wall progresses forward, towards the sidewalk/street. So, in order to provide the necessary additional support, the cavities between the brick and stone walls will be filled with a mix of stone 'rubble', compacted dirt, concrete and rebars, which will tie into the new concrete stairs.
Our front yard has been converted into a giant sand pit/concrete staging area. I'm so glad we waited to landscape...
Jose and his guys managed to remove the handrails without any damage, which was NOT an easy feat. It took 6 guys to remove these solid chunks of stone. Already we have started discussing how to reattach them... I really hope it works. They are gorgeous and it would be a shame if we couldn't use them.
We're going to try and pulverize the old steps into sand and stone chips, to mix into the concrete, along with the aggregate. We thought it would give more texture and 'color', even though we are adding a bit of pigment to the concrete mix already. The only concern is that the stone may compromise the strength of the concrete... it's very soft. We weren't planning on using much, but still... we're going to do some test samples and see how they turn out.
The stone and brick walls, serving as supports/bearing walls for the original stairs, turned out to be in worse shape than we thought. Both need major tuckpointing. Originally, we thought the stones, located in these walls, were quite structurally sound and solid. Turns out, this is not the case. The stone gets more veneer-like (thinner and smaller) in size, as the wall progresses forward, towards the sidewalk/street. So, in order to provide the necessary additional support, the cavities between the brick and stone walls will be filled with a mix of stone 'rubble', compacted dirt, concrete and rebars, which will tie into the new concrete stairs.
Jose and his guys managed to remove the handrails without any damage, which was NOT an easy feat. It took 6 guys to remove these solid chunks of stone. Already we have started discussing how to reattach them... I really hope it works. They are gorgeous and it would be a shame if we couldn't use them.
We're going to try and pulverize the old steps into sand and stone chips, to mix into the concrete, along with the aggregate. We thought it would give more texture and 'color', even though we are adding a bit of pigment to the concrete mix already. The only concern is that the stone may compromise the strength of the concrete... it's very soft. We weren't planning on using much, but still... we're going to do some test samples and see how they turn out.
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