Concrete projects that make Home Improvement in Chesterton easier year-round

People looking this up usually want to know which outdoor work actually makes a Chesterton house easier to live with through snow season and the rest of the year. For most of the older places we get called to, that starts with the stoop and the driveway.

You use those surfaces every day, groceries coming across them and shovels scraping them. Cars sit on them too. When they fail, the house feels harder even if the inside work is going well. That’s why Home Improvement in Chesterton so often begins outdoors.

Home Improvement in Chesterton after years of snow and salt

Chesterton sits close enough to Lake Michigan that snow piles up and stays. We see it packed against a stoop. Melt water sits in a low patio corner. We have pulled up driveway slabs that looked sound in the middle and were coming apart at the joints, where salt and standing water had been working on them.

On an older house, the original outdoor concrete is often already in bad shape by the time someone is ready to improve the rest of the place. We show up to stoops that have dropped away from the threshold, and to patios that pond against the siding. People call us about those because they walk them every morning.

We work in Chesterton, Indiana and across North West Indiana, and this is the pattern we keep running into on houses that have been here a while. A broken stoop is in the way every day, so it moves up the list when someone is already working on the house.

We run into Chesterton houses that have been added onto, so the back door height and the yard grade sit at different levels than the original patio. We have had to build up a stoop or step a patio to make the new slab meet a door that sits higher than the yard.

Stoops and patios for Home Improvement in Chesterton

When we replace a stoop, we’re usually matching a door height while the walk has settled. The old pour has dropped, or the tread noses have scaled, and the first step is a different height than it used to be. That’s the trip you feel with bags in your hands. We form the new stoop to the existing threshold so the door sweep meets the slab again.

Patios are the other outdoor call that comes with this work. An older slab that pitches the wrong way holds water against the house. We re-pour so the surface sheds water away from the foundation, and so there is a flat enough spot for a table after it rains. People here use the backyard once it is warm enough to sit outside. Some of them treat Chesterton as home base for the dunes and the lake in summer, and they skip a patio that stays wet.

Drives take salt. We see surface scaling along the tire paths, and aprons that have dropped at the garage so the door weatherstrip no longer meets the slab. Replacing the bad sections, or the whole drive if it is too far gone, is Home Improvement in Chesterton you feel every time you park.

Overlays come up on Home Improvement in Chesterton visits when the old slab is still structurally there and the surface is what failed. Overlays can go over that if the base is sound. If the slab has settled or is holding water, an overlay will not fix the pitch. We say that on the visit, because covering a slab that already ponds leaves the water problem in place.

Pouring new slabs in Home Improvement in Chesterton

Cabe’s Concrete is family owned and operated, and we’ve been at this since 2006. We write quotes out line by line, labor and material separate. We don’t inflate the price of material to make a few extra dollars. We source our products so we know they’re the best available for the job.

We specialize in decorative concrete when the project calls for it, including stamped patterns, overlays, colored concrete, and acid stains. Plenty of Chesterton houses need a straight gray slab that drains and stays put. Front stoops usually get a broom finish so they’re not slick once they get salted and shoveled. Colored and stamped work shows up more on rear patios in the jobs we have done.

On a stoop replacement we demo the failed pour, check the base, set forms to the door, and pour so the steps and the landing are the same mix. Patio jobs take more form work because of the pitch. If a panel has failed and the rest of a drive is sound, we saw out the failed panel and tie into what is left.

We set the forms so the new stoop meets the existing threshold, and we pitch patio slabs away from the siding.