The day of the place

At 8:30 am I call Redi-Mix (not the dance club). "Concrete," the guy says. I say,

"I need 3 yards of 5 inch slump for this afternoon." He says,

"What strength do you want?" I say,

"It's for a garage pad." He says,

"So 3500 (something or other I didn't catch) and 5 yards?" I say,

"3 yards." He says,

"Right. What time?" I say,

"2 o'clock?" He says,

"It'll be there." That was the most fun conversation of the day.

After that I got in my truck and headed for Rite-Way in Stinkler to pick up the bull-float and the power trowel. While there I was propositioned to sell my truck. It would be easier to sell myself, I tell the guy. Probably more moral too. I love my truck. There's no two ways about it.

Coming back through Altona I pick up the angle iron I ordered from Allen Penner (I phoned him at 9:30 pm last night to ask for it, and he had it ready for me by 9 am this morning! Can you beat small town service?!) at Sunland Steelworks, which I've devised to use as helpmeet for skreeding. That might have been the best purchase of the day, because I don't know how we'd have skreeded the pad flat without it as a guide. Allen's a great guy who lives in the village and works in town and goes to the Holdeman church. He's a good welder too. If a guy can weld, he can go to any church he likes, if you ask me.

Back at home we do the final preparations for the placement: level up and fasten the angle iron; prepare the 2x4s to use as skreeds; generally get psyched. Then we have lunch.

At 2 pm the truck arrives, and we're off. I'm not going to say it was easy, but I am going to say it went better than I expected. GeeVs, M, and I worked well together. We didn't get pissed off at each other (much). We worked steady for about 2 hours, and then the concrete was placed, skreeded, and floated, and looked like this:

GeeVs, wary of the stalking wheelbarrow.

Then we waited. But not really long enough, because when we thought we could get on it with the power trowel, it was a bit wet, like this:

Notice all the footy prints. Too deep. Too wet.

So we cut our losses, took care of the footprints, and went in for supper. At about 7:20 I got back out there, fired up the power trowel and power trowelled away till about 9:30 (had to add a spritz of water now and then to make things work) . Then fiddled a bit with hand trowel, and we ended up with a garage pad that looks like this:

Not bad. Not perfect, but given that I place about 1 pad of concrete every 7 years, I think I've improved. I'd say that pretty thorough planning, thanks to little-big bro T for all the oral help (heehee), and more tenacity with the power trowel made all the difference. 

People, we have a garage pad!

Tomorrow, we place

Some people say that you pour concrete, but I have it on decent authority that since concrete is a solid, even if there's water in it at the beginning, you place it. So tomorrow, if all goes according to my will, we will place concrete here, in what will be a warm garage this winter:

Who knew there was so much to think about in order to get a floor in right. There's making it level (at least around the edges). There's the slope to the drain - if you're going to have a heated garage you're going to need to collect and get rid of the snow that melts off of the car, and a drain is the ideal place ... as long as the concrete is evenly sloped to it. There's the beast known as the power-trowel that, operated correctly, will make your floors smooth and shiny.

Anyway, I have aspirations here to achieve a level, flat, evenly sloped placement of concrete. I do not necessarily have faith in myself to be able to do it. It's not like I place concrete everyday, and GeeVs, who will be my assistant, hasn't worked with concrete before either.

Let the placement begin.  

Bustin' concrete

Usually we've photo-documented some of the more momentous renos or changes we undertake. Today when F and I pounded and pried out the concrete from the garage and back work area, we dropped that ball. I do however, have a few pics of what it looks like afterward (which isn't really that interesting), and the tools we used to do it.

First off, we're breaking out these two 50 plus year old pads because they're terrible condition - cracked and heaved and uneven. Also, this winter the frost heaves were particularly pronounced, which effected the doors. It's become obvious that these pads need to be removed and one, in the garage, will be replaced. The other pad will be replaced by an independently floating wooden platform.

Both pads came out more easily then I'd anticipated. We used sledge hammers and a heavy, chisel-ended steel bar.

    

    

This steel bar is the best $41.50 I've ever spent! Once we'd cracked the concrete by pounding it with the sledge (we found that, consistently, if you pounded a slab in the centre of it 10 times, the cracks would spider out from that centre spot and then the whole pad would break apart) we were able to pound the chisel end of the bar into the cracks and pry the slab apart.

Then we'd load the chunks into the bucket of the tractor and cart it away to a pile where it will be picked up by a local backhoe operator. (Apparently there's high demand for broken up concrete to be used as fill.) We started at 9 and finished the garage by 12.

After a lunch of smokies and beer, we attacked the second pad in the back of the barn. Again, in 3 hours we had finished it, even though by the end we were quite spent. We toasted the day with a couple more beers and a pipe of tobacco. 

By the way, I'm also moving and rebuilding my workshop from this mess ...

... to this modular masterpiece (yet to be completed)!

No ride today, but I did work on my bike (It had developed an annoying creak during the ride to the WFF last Wednesday, and then the chain broke, which caused the rear derailleur to deflect into the wheel and break a spoke, which the fine folks of Olympia (through the support of the WFF) fixed at no cost while I was at the fest. It seems though that just about everything on the bike loosened up after the ride (I suspect she was a bit tired from the year of commuting) and the creaking just didn't stop (turns out I'd broken one cup in my bottom bracket too).).  I rode 23 ks of gravel and dirt roads yesterday on my crossbike, and the day before that I rode 58 ks on the road (the Rosetown loop).

I'll try to be more regular ... I'll try to do my best, but I may not.

 

Flooring the Herdsman's House

We've started re-installing the tongue-in-groove fir floorboards. We're re-using whatever we can salvage of the wood from the second, most recent layer of flooring, which we think was probably installed some time in 20s or thirties.

The original floor was 1x6 tng fir (You can see some of them in the picture above, beneath the 1x4s, as well as a pile of three of them off to the right (you can see some of the rot on these). We're not going to re-use these boards, but we'll keep them on display somewhere ... ). It was, for the most part rotten, as it was basically in complete contact with the dirt beneath the floor, except for the "joists" that appear to have been 2x4s placed on something like 32 inch centres. They must have expected that they had built the house high enough that the dirt inside its walls would remain dry. Much of the second layer was rotted as well, but we've salvaged enough that we think we'll be able to cover close to a third of the floor in the original wood. These boards are 1x4s, with a 3.25 inch face.

We've also salvaged floorboards from a housebarn that had been in Sommerfeld, which we'll use when we run out of the material that was originally from the building. These boards from Sommerfeld are 1x4 fir, with a 3.125 inch face! Why the eighth of an inch difference? When we install these two sizes side-be-side, we don't think it'll be noticeable, unless you're really looking for it. A final curiosity regarding board size is that, in case we need more boards to complete the job, I've sourced out new 1x4 fir flooring from Brown & Rutherford, and the face on these boards will be 2.875 inches! So, when all's said and done, the floor will likely feature three iterations of the 1x4 tng fir floor!

Once the boards are installed, we will sand them - since the salvaged boards had been painted in various patterns - so that we have an even surface, and then Margruite will repaint them in the original style (in the main room) of the house, and also use two other patterns (in each of the two bedrooms).

Tomorrow I will ride with some guys from the area, from Altona to Moose Lake, about 200 ks. We pray for favourable winds!

Wood work

Finished a long overdue cladding of an interior barn wall today,



as well as the installation of the subfloor in the Herdsman's House. So now we'll get to working on laying the floor proper: a combination of 1x4 reclaimed t&g fir salvaged from a housebarn in Sommerfeld, some of the original 1x5 t&g fir (whatever wasn't rotten), and some new 1x5 fir from Brown & Rutherford (actually it'll probably come from some tree out in BC or Alberta, and then it'll make its way to Wpg, and then here).

The place will have two bedrooms (at the front), and one large room for sitting, eating, or just relaxing. We also plan to attach a leanto onto the back of it, which will be where there'll be composting toilet, water, a shower, and electricity. The old place will remain unelectrified and otherwise be restored to 1930s era decor and furnishings (as much as possible). We intend to make it available as a retreat centre for individuals (or groups of two to four) who would be interested in using it for a few days in a row, to work on a project of some sort. Preferably an interesting project. Preferably not a political project. Preferably an artistic, or intellectual endeavour. Preferably a project that requires peace and calm. We'll let you know when it's done. Then you can book your times (a la B'n'Bs the deal would include fixin's for breakfast).

When it's done this place is going to be a sweet retreat! Maybe in a year it'll be ready to host your much needed timeout time, or your, "I have to finish that (insert artsy project here) time." Whatever the case, we're excited about it. Really excited!

Blatherin' away at the walls

Some days it just feels like I'm blathering away into oblivion. I ask for advice, and no answers. Is blogging like praying? You believe someone's out there paying attention, but you're not sure what will result.

Put up a wall today, with Margruite and Justin. It was an old wall, but a good wall. More or less straight. Not quite functional (you can walk around it), but that will come later, when we add the other walls.

If you often feel like no one's listening, try this website, where you can depend on someone to email you everyday with a simple question for you to answer. They'll even keep record of your writing for the rest of your life! Aren't you special!?!