The Garage Demise, part 8

We had been stuck in a weather cycle here where it rained (POURED) every weekend for three weeks. We had hoped to have concrete poured before last weekend, but alas it was not to be.

We did have PLENTY of time to get the forms and such in, though. We poured right on top of the existing floor (I think I talked about that already) and re-used the ceiling boards as concrete forms, too. We hardly had to buy anything.

We also left in the back wall. More on that in a bit.

Below is one of the pins that is holding the concrete form in place. As you can see, we painted it bright orange so that all the criminals that that apparently secretly run around our property in the middle of the night would see it at the last minute as they tripped and fell.

And it was about 30* that morning as we got up around 6am to wait for the concrete truck to arrive....

The crew: l-r, Corey, my FiL Ray, Vino-the-security-guard-from-work, and Matt-the-husband-from-here. Max is freaking out inside because he isn't part of the party:
Vino hasn't done concrete before, as you can tell from this picture where he's cornered himself in really well. He really pitched in, but I'm not entirely sure he knew what he'd gotten himself into.
We used the sludge from the last bit of concrete to fill in the back wall a bit to strengthen it:
Using the 16' float to smooth things out:Smoothing a bit more:TaDa!!!!! All in all, we finished 10 yards of concrete in a little over an hour. That is really, really good in terms of time, they allow you 1hr 50min for 10 yards.

Weekend

Sorry, no NaBloPoMo this weekend. No time. Saturday we had a wood delivery from Lowes, about 5 hours after we were expecting it. I had a surprise trip to the vet which lasted an hour longer than I expected, then we worked.

Sunday, we worked. Period. Today, I hurt.

I will be posting the concrete post tonight, and after that I'll probably do a weekly accomplishments post about the garage.

Fall Veggie Update

I was about to post about pouring concrete when I remembered that a) this started out as a garden blog, and b) I haven't posted about gardening in a loooong time, so I'm doing that today.

Onions: I harvested our 2009 onions already and they are in the basement, but on the suggestion of a friend I seeded onion directly into a bed this past August to overwinter. This was a French variety I'd really wanted to try more of, and I'm really excited to see how it works out. So far, so good, as they are coming up and look healthy and sturdy:
Garlic/Shallots: I planted these this past weekend. 35 French gray shallots, 3 red shallots, and I'm not sure how much garlic yet (I haven't tallied them up). Planted Transylvanian, Chinese Pink, Music, Applegate, and Shantung Purple.

Broccoli: I have two varieties of broccoli in, too: this fall crop and a purple sprouting broccoli for next spring. This year's batch is almost ready to pick.

Cabbages: I may have put these in too late, I'm not sure. I've never grown cabbage before.

Turnips: I planted a lot of turnips, ONE grew. It is currently in the refrigerator waiting to be cooked.

Carrots: These did beautifully in my second batch. I've picked a lot, but there is a lot still in there. I'm going to wait until after the first real freeze to pull them.

Parsnips: Still in the ground, I have no idea what's going on down there.

Peanuts: I got about 8 dozen peanuts!! Off four plants!! I'm pretty happy with that, and they are good size, so I think I will grow them again.

The Garage Demise, part 7

This is the concrete-prep post. Sorry if I'm boring people out there with all the details, but I find it a bit interesting. I've never been part of a demolition/rebuild before. And I'd like to document it for the future, too, so we can look back someday and say "Remember when..."

After the roof and walls were down, we needed to prep the existing pad for a new layer of concrete. We decided to pour right on top of the existing pad. We had no idea how thick the current one was (it turned out to be waaaay thicker than we'd thought, about 10" instead of 4"):

We needed to get as much crud off as possible, and we decided to scrub the back wall while we were at it, too, since that was staying as well. Check out the dirt coming off the wall!

Of course, AFTER we had swept and scrubbed the floor as much as we could, DH decided to take the steel I-beam down. After we'd cleaned the floor. After. *sigh*

They decided to try to push it up using a 4x4 and Kubby. This, I felt, was destined to be a bit of a disaster...
The pole fell over:
The pole gets put back up:
It doesn't work. Thank god, I can just see the thing slipping and getting launched by the backhoe into the air and coming down on the truck in the background. Just our luck.
Then, he decides to take the bull by the horns and just PUSH it over.
This worked.
He-man is very happy about this. But now we have concrete all over the floor and need to clean it....again.
The I-beam needed to be cut in half. He tried the Saws-all (Sawzall?), but it wouldn't cut. It was starting to burn up....
So he borrowed the torch from the garage across the street...
But proceeded to have a lot of trouble getting it adjusted to where he needed it to be....
So we got the garage guy (and our neighbor, for now) to do it.
The next installment is the one we've all been waiting for: CONCRETE!!! Finally!!!

Concrete Done

Concrete is done, I'm beat. I hurt. Matt hurts. Max is fine, though, he didn't do too awful much. Pictures to follow this week. Huge weight lifted, now we can really BUILD!!!!

Concrete

The concrete truck is due in the morning....gotta go, work to do!

Jane Henry and Her Hammer

This blog post has a soundtrack. Please open this link in another window and wait for it to start playing before you continue...
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When we took the first wall down, we had hoped to be able to save all the block. We couldn't save it all...but we decided to use it instead for fill under the patio slab, thus saving us about $800. We knew it was going to be hard work to break it up...... Fortunately, we had someone come along that was pleased as punch to help.

Our friend, Angie, was just thrilled to come over and break things. She wanted to break things sooooo bad.....And break things she did....for over 2 hours, Angie swung that 20lb sledge and broke up block...
She only really stopped for a few breathers and a pizza break.....

...and to put some bandaids on her blisters....

She even worked at breaking up the lentil, but Matt wound up doing that. It had some rebar going through it, so it was very very sturdy:Surveying Angie's good work:There is another version of Take This Hammer here, along with a couple other 'work' songs.