Month: July 2020

Another 7am start on a lovely cool morning for more concrete. Felt much better about this one – what with being largely organised, not running around like an idiot at the last minute, and simply having done it before. Had few hours of setup with Maurice and his crew, finishing off the formwork and steel – some quite tight timelines on this pour, what with Maurice trying to retrieve his schedule from the dumpster fire of the recent wet weeks. Prep went something like this:…Continue Reading “Shed pour day” →

I’ve been stalled for a few weeks waiting for the rain to go away long enough for the shed slab to be poured. I’d dug out the foundations for the shed within a week of the house slab being poured, then the rain started and my concrete guy’s schedule went to hell. In the meantime, I caught up on some small jobs: Taking the formwork off the house slab and sealing the sides: which was more digging, lots of tedious painting and then some more…Continue Reading “Small progress and rain” →

Two days post-pour, with some decent rainfall overnight to keep the slab from drying out too fast….or at all, really. 🙂

Back to the block after snatching 6 hours’ sleep. Immediately got roped into cutting more lengths of ply, after inconveniently pointing out that a few bits of formwork were a touch low – which I noticed….oh, about 8:30 last night. Meanwhile the pumper arrived, squeezed itself between my verge trees and set up: shortly followed by the first of the concrete trucks. I put together the last of the inside formwork (this is fine, right?) which I couldn’t do late last night because of noise…Continue Reading “Pour day!” →

Back on my own today, putting together the C-channels for the inside edges of the upstand. Figured this would be a long day, but it turned into the first late-night epic. Spent the morning welding together the last 2 sections, which were about 7 and 9m long respectively and included my architect’s piece of “flair” – the recessed wall on the pantry which steps in about 200mm for *reasons*. Why did I agree to this? There’s a shot of the formwork and C-channel here from…Continue Reading “Concrete prep, day 3” →

Spent yesterday doing boring stuff – clearing extra sand out of the trenches (we’ve had a fair bit of rain which ruined my nice clean lines) and experimenting with my sweet new welding skills: Early start today, with a vast array of men arriving shortly afterwards – the concreter, his 3 helpers and two steel guys. 8 hours of chaos, discussions, a couple of conversations with the engineer later, we’d turned this: into this: I did my usual a-bit-of-everything – started off cutting some more…Continue Reading “Concrete prep: day 2” →