Monday, August 2, 2010

CMR Update August 1: Crete isn't just an Island

On Friday July 30th I went over to the house to see this... An enormous red concrete truck.





What I didn't get to see (nor was I interested in seeing it) were the foundation footers being poured earlier that morning. What I wanted to see and what I DID get to see was "He-man Master of the Concrete Spraying Fire Hose" spew tons and tons of high pressure concrete on wooden forms covered with rebar. The concrete comes out with such enormous pressure that he had to have two "spotters" just in case he should lose his balance and go flying around holding on to the end of the high pressure hose spraying concrete all over the CMR where it was not called for in the plans.




Once the maestro was finished with the spray - the two spotters followed up behind with the rough finish work. First, a tall piece of steel is used to trim and level the freshly sprayed globby concrete and the shovel is used to basically take off big blobs of over-spray from the top.

And finally, "trowel guy" smooths the whole thing down to level concrete perfection.

Here's a nice photo showing "trowel guy" smoothing on the upper portion of the new basement and "leveler guy" in the lower portion of the new basement in two different stages.

And what a difference some concrete can make. Boys, we got ourselves a living space going on here!

Here's the foundation wall on Friday morning:

And, taken from a side angle, the same piece of foundation on Sunday morning.


Pool Room with just the wet footings on Friday morning:

Pool room with partial walls and dry footings on Sunday.


And, today I send BIG kudos to my construction guy and architects for thinking outside the box (and our wallets) to come up with a creative solution to a little sub-surface water drainage issue this past week. These guys are the best - and, so far, we really are pleased with the team we've put together. We're having fun, they're having fun, and we're all getting along. No yelling, no screaming, no reason to use power tools inappropriately.
Hope that didn't just jinx everything. Just in case.... I rapped the table - - it's wood and all.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Is that pool room as in pool table or swimming pool? ME

wendy wisniewski said...

Well, now that you mention it - it does kind of look like the shape of a pool (the kind with water) - but the original design was the it be large enough for a regulation pool table. It's a little amusing for us since we don't actually own a pool table - regulation or otherwise :)

Stephanie said...

I wondered the same thing. I vote for swimming pool!