16 posts tagged “home improvement”
It was exactly 30 years ago this summer that my dad taught me how to mix concrete. I spent the majority of that summer standing in the back of his pickup truck shoveling sand & gravel mix and cement into the mixer. Include just the right amount of water and, Voila!, you have concrete. By the end of that summer when my later to be first husband drove up to Denver so he could take me back to college he was highly annoyed to discover he could no longer beat me at arm wrestling.
Today, for the first time since that summer, I mixed concrete again. Ken purchased a mixer just like Daddy's and I was able to get everything set up just the way I wanted it.
Ken cheated by purchasing bags of concrete mix that only require the addition of water, but there's still a fine art to getting it just right. Too much or too little water and it just doesn't work right.
That's a good looking batch of concrete!
Daddy would have been proud!
***Added note***
Today when I took my mom to the doctor I was telling her about all the work I did yesterday and complaining because we don't own a shovel like the one Daddy had me using. After we got back to the house Mother let me go out in the garage, find the shovel, and bring it home. Concrete work will be so much easier next time now that I have a short shovel!!!
That's it! Everything else left to do is just minor little stuff. My new heating and air conditioning unit (along with the required electrical work) was installed this morning. I can barely hear it running when I'm outside standing next to it and I can't hear it at all from inside.
The thermostat appears to be very complicated and will take me years to learn. Do you think they could have put any more buttons on it? 8:-)
As soon as Jonah wakes up from his nap we can go to the park.
Not done by any stretch of the imagination, but in. We were up until after midnight last night laying the last of the floor. Today we got it cleaned and then moved in my stuff. Now Ken can have the use of his power tools to finish off the room. Next up: baseboards.
After the big ice storm I knew there was no way my studio would be at the move in stage by the end of today, but we are farther along than I figured. We've finished cleaning and sealing the brick wall, hung the blinds, put up a shelf, and yesterday we laid 1/3 of the floor! Since Ken is going hunting next weekend I doubt if it will get done in the next few days, but we're getting there!
What's left?
1) Install the heat and air system.
2) Clean and seal the brick wall.
3) Install the flooring.
There are also a few cosmetic things I'd like to have taken care of before the long arm comes in. Our current plan is to have everything ready to move the machine in by Christmas Day. I'd like to move the machine in the day after. We'll see.
The way these guys work is something to watch. It's truly an art form. The choreography of it all amazes me.
The concrete trucks were supposed to arrive around 2:00. The first one showed up at 3:15 and the second at 4:45. While we were waiting for the first truck the carpenter and contractor got bored so they added siding and shingles to the dog house they built a couple of weeks ago.
I should have known this construction project was going along too well. About an hour ago as I was diligently working away on a customer's quilt I stopped to look out my window into the back yard and what did I see? A man on a Bobcat demolishing my iris bed! The worst of it is he was doing it on purpose!!!! I discovered that when I came out to discuss the situation with the contractor. He said that in order to level the yard for proper water drainage it "had to go." Um......I'm right here. Couldn't you have discussed this with me before you did it? Just so happens I've got a perfectly healthy 25 year old step son vegging in front of the TV today who could have been out there saving the iris before you did your work. Now he has to go out there to see what he can salvage from all the damage you've done. Nice going, Jerk.
The work on my studio is nearing completion, so they started work on the driveway today.
The outside is almost done. Contractor says he should be finished with the room in about a week (after which we still have a few things to do to it before I can move in).
Work is moving a whole lot faster since the contractor fired the first carpenter and hired a new one who actually shows up and works when he says he will.
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