"I Finally Hit a Wall After 4 Days"

Our neighbors are VERY nice because no one said anything to us about the huge mound of concrete that sat on our front lawn for a WEEK

We debated many ways to dispose of all of the concrete. We knew we'd have A LOT to get rid of. The first option was to rent a dumpster. But that clocked in at $550. Of course, the nice thing would be that it would be delivered and taken away without any work from us. We'd have it for a week and we'd be able to dump in wheelbarrow loads inside. The downside was that the largest size dumpster for our material was 10 cubic yards and we knew we'd have more concrete than that. Also, I've heard that sometimes when you have a dumpster on a jobsite that people driving or walking by will use it as their dumpster too and put their garbage inside. No bueno.

The other option was to rent a dump truck. The cost to rent was $210 for a day and we could take the concrete waste to the concrete recycling center for a good price. This would involve more labor though - moving the concrete to the front yard and then loading it into the truck. We thought this would be the cheaper option because of the cheap dumping charge at the concrete recycling center but boy oh boy did they raise their prices. When we did this last time (about a year ago) a pick-up truck load was $15. We learned on our first visit that they raised their price. A LOT. A pick-up truck load was now $100!!! (we were very irresponsible and didn't call for pricing beforehand, but who would have thought they'd raise their price that much in a year?)

Anyway, we went with the dump truck option (thinking we'd be saving money). Originally we had made our reservation to rent one from Cresco in Oakland, but they stupidly had rented out too many 5-6 yard dump trucks and called us the day before to tell us we'd need to pick ours up 30 minutes away in Fremont. Lame-o.

In the morning we went to get the truck and drove it home

The back of the truck had a door that swung open when you un-hitched it for dumping, but it wouldn't stay open when the truck wasn't tilted up for dumping. Instead, we lifted it open and stuck some 2x4's in to hold it open while we loaded it up

Sarah and Eli came over again to lend a hand in loading up the truck (Chris built them a new computer when their's went kaput in exchange for house labor)



Once our first load was full we drove it to the site to dump it. Chris had lots of fun driving the truck :) hehe

When we got to the concrete recycling center I hoped out to help direct the truck and get it dumped. It was a pretty cool site to see. It was like a tonka truck :)




The process was lather, rinse, repeat for 3 loads to the concrete recycling center. Each load from start to finish took us about 90 minutes (the recycling center is only 5-10 minutes from our house thankfully).

By the end of the day Sarah had developed an excellent strategy for shoveling up the small concrete pieces

Once all the concrete was clear and we still had time on our day long dump truck rental...

...we decided to take a load of dirt to one of our "free dirt" craiglist post replies. So we started shoveling the mound of dirt in the backyard

We had planned on taking the dirt to someone in Alameda. The person had very specific directions as to where they wanted the dirt to go, and when we got to their house we realized it was entirely impossible to drop off the dirt where they needed it with our big ol' dump truck. We tried to call the person to talk about our predicament, but of course in true craigslist fashion there was no answer.

So there Chris and I sat in Alameda with a dump truck 1/4 full of dirt and nowhere to go. We also realized at this time - 4:15 - that Cresco actually closed at 5 and NOT 5:30. Holy shit. We had a load of dirt with no place to take it and 45 minutes to get to the rental place in Fremont during rush our traffic (and it normally takes about 30 minutes to get there in NO traffic once you get on the freeway, and we were about 10 minutes away from the freeway). This is where Chris hit his wall. Mine came earlier during the weekend when I became worthless at digging, and Chris' came a day later when he remarked to me, "Yeah, I finally hit my wall after 4 days" as we sat, parked, with our dump truck full of dirt and nowhere to go. Which, now looking back on it days later is pretty hilarious. But I knew to be quiet then.

We felt a little like this

I called Cresco to see what was the latest we could drop off the truck. It turns out if we took it in the morning before our pick-up time the day before at 8:20am, we would still only get charged for one day. That was a good option, but neither Chris nor I wanted to get up really early before work to drive the truck down to Fremont.

So Chris and I went for it. I won't tell you what happened to the dirt.....but needless to say we were pulling onto the freeway at 4:32 trying to haul ass with an empty dump truck. Luckily the carpool lane going south on I-880 is only 2 people so we moved into the lane and chugged along at variable speeds between 35-65 with me clutching my knees hoping that we made it to Cresco in time. After 28 minutes of me totally freaking out we pulled off the freeway, sped through town and pulled into the Cresco parking lot at 5 on the dot. MADE IT!!!!

At the end of the day after gas fees (of course we had NO TIME to stop to fill up for gas and got stuck with their high fuel cost) and horrendous dump fees we spent about $600! :( Which is OVER the dumpster cost. Boo. After being completely annoyed with ourselves for spending more money and making more work for ourselves than if we had just rented a dumpster we reasoned with ourselves that we got rid of about 14 cubic yards of waste (concrete + dirt), and that obviously wouldn't fit in the $550 10 cubic yard dumpster (which I'm sure came with more fees tacked on) so we probably did save a bit of money. At least, that's what we keep telling ourselves.