Kitchen Area Before

Troop 254 & Helpers

Kaipo Fitisemanu from Troop 254 located in Torrance chose for his Eagle Scout service project the refurbishment of the SCLS food prep and picnic area. The task was broken down into 3 parts:

1. Preparing and painting the picnic tables,
2. Cleaning the picnic and food prep area.
3 Replacing the food prep area paving stone flooring with a smooth concrete floor.

On Friday, June 6th at 4:00 PM Kaipo and approximately 40 members of his troop, family and friends arrived at the SCLS facility armed with shovels, rakes and other implements of destruction. The first thing they did was to remove all of the picnic tables, both round and rectangular, from the picnic area and relocate them in the steaming bay area so they could be worked on.

Another group of scouts proceeded to remove and relocate all of the grills, tables, lockers, serving counter and tent cover from the food prep area and place them in a temporary storage area. Another group started to pull up the old paving stones and stack them in another storage area. After the pavers were removed, scouts started leveling the area, digging down approximately 4 inches into the hard packed adobe. After the area was dug down to the proper depth, the form was laid out for the pour the following day.

Meanwhile, a small group of scouts and parents were busy sanding the picnic tables to get them ready to be painted the following day. There were a large number of tables, and they were attacked with vigor by the scouts as the surfaces were roughed up to accept the green paint.

While all this was going on, another group of scouts, friends and parents were busy raking up all of the leaves and pine needles in the picnic area, the berm and all the way to the caboose. Over 100 bags of stuff was removed in the clean up which continued on through the following day. This continued on until approximately 8:00 PM when everyone left for the day after a nice meal of BBQ hot dogs prepared by Grandpa Fitisemanu.

At 6:00 AM on Saturday the 7th, the scouts, parents and friends re-assembled at the SCLS facility, continued cleaning up and started painting the tables. Each table would ultimately get 3 coats of paint which would make them look like new.

The concrete forms were finalized and the rebar was laid out inside the area. Scouts installed the rebar, tied the junctions and added the Dobie blocks for spacing. At approximately 10:00 PM the concrete truck showed up and the pumping began. Scouts manned the pump hose so it would not kink and the concrete was pumped into the form. After pumping in over 4.5 yards of concrete the pour was complete and the leveling and finishing was started. The concrete was finished approximately 3 hours later and came out perfect.

The picnic tables were moved back into position in the now clean and level picnic area and the new floor was christened by Kaipo with his mark. After the concrete fully hardens the grills and other stuff will be moved back into position. A nice lunch of hot dogs was served again as we all gathered to give thanks and relax a bit after a hard days work.

No more tripping over ragged paving stones, no more standing in mud or dust to get served. Great job Kaipo, you and your group have done an excellent job on this Eagle Scout Service project. You should all be very proud of your accomplishments at SCLS, and we thank you for all of the hard work and planning that went into this project.

Below are some of the other photos taken during this project. Click on any photo on this page to enlarge them.

Watch the time lapse video.