Slab on grade! Slab on grade!
The workshop grows tantalizingly closer.
Through the heroic help and guidance of two supremely awesome people (my partner Sarah and our builder friend/awesome gal Jen), we successfully made a concrete rectangle!
Here was our process:
- When we last left off, there was half a hole in the ground. I did get around to finishing that! We dug out to the proper dimensions, and down about 12″.
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The 12″ depth was so that we could fill it up with all the accumulated fieldstones and rubble from several years’ gardening. Here, a typically smiley Sarah beams over the heart-shaped chain we set up to be buried under everything.
Skip ahead a few weeks, and we’re on concrete delivery day!
- In the meantime, we leveled the hole to grade with a gravel/sand mix, I built the form, and built the walls (on the left of the picture). Then straw-bale builder extraordinaire Jen helped me square, level, and support it. The blue foam is going on top of the gravel as a vapour barrier and insulator.
The (massive!) delivery truck arrives.
- Jen and I rocked out.
- I made the wheelbarrow trips as the ladies did the work that required actual skill: levelling out the muck and spreading it around. They did a mighty fine job, good enough for the concrete delivery man to insist they start a business! (my pre-built walls behind them)
- After much waiting for the concrete to dry a bit, we eventually got to stretch out and trowel that baby! Silky smooth!
- A little treat at the entrance way…
- Like a mirror finish!
I took the form off a few days later and everything looks good.
It’s kinda cool to make permanent structures, building something out of nothing (or at least pulling together disparate bits of somethings to make a holistic kind of something).
Anyway, next step: throw those walls up, and build a gable roof. Maybe this weekend? Who knows!
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