We recently gave the exterior of our home a revamping. Notice the pictures? I know what you are thinking, it sure needed it! Yes, it did! In the process, I requested for my husband to remove those brick boxes because I felt like it limited our space. In fact, I often joked that it seemed like we had to walk in a straight line as we walked in. I felt like we were the duck family as we assembled ourselves in a straight single file line. No thank you! So, we removed the brick. It was something I’ve wanted to do from day one, but we’ve focused on the interior of our home for 3 years. Since we will be hosting a birthday party soon, we knew we had to revamp the exterior of our home.

Now that I’ve provided an unnecessary amount of backstory on the home, I apologize, I am heading into what I’ve learned about pouring cement and how the rain affects it. Goodness! I am doing this to provide guidance because I don’t want anyone to make the same mistake. And, yes, it may seem like common sense, but common sense may not always come so naturally, I know, the shame!

Here is the story. After we removed the rocks, dirt and bricks, we hired a neighbor to help us pour concrete, since he had all the necessary tools. Sadly, we didn’t check the weather. That night, after a wonderful session of concrete pouring ended, we went to sleep. Unfortunately, we didn’t check the weather and woke up to pouring rain. Even worse, the rain hit the fresh concrete with force because we do not have gutters above our threshold causing extreme downpour on that area. The concrete was ruined! The rain created a little lake of water through the concrete therefore exposing gravel. Luckily, the neighbor just charged us for extra concrete and used a quick dry concrete to just patch it up. It turned out well, but after the devastation happened. This could have been prevented if we would have simply checked the climate or covered the area with tarps or umbrellas. Word of advice, check the climate before you pour or cover the area.