Wednesday, May 11, 2011

The First Pour

I'm not even talking about rain this time, I'm talking concrete! After 45+ years of a dirt floor in the original work shed on the property, it was time to turn it into a much improved storage and work area. Hollywood, which it is called because the front is just a facade over an old shed , is so large that Dave felt it best to do it in two pours. He prepped the area first by making the forms to hold the concrete, leveled it all up, and put in reinforcing.Yesterday was the big day that the truck arrived and we had our faithful volunteers to help us. They didn't know what they had in store for them, since the chute wouldn't reach inside the shed due to the overhead clearance of the facade doors. This meant that the guys had to transfer all the 5 1/2 cubic yards of concrete by wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full.

Luckily, as the concrete was spread out, their travelling distance became less and less. It didn't help that the pressure was on both our work team and the truck driver to get the job done quickly, because the driver was on a time schedule and we could have been charged overtime. The company was nice enough not to do that due to unforeseen circumstances. This gives yet another meaning to Rake 'n' Scrape. Jim and Dave leveled and smoothed off the top, and the end product was perfect (that is until a cat walked through it during the night!). We cannot thank enough Jim, James, John, Chris, and of course our ever present inspector Karl, for all their help. It was so much 'fun', we'll do it again next week!

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