Half Way there with the Concrete

 (This is a post that was written in September 2011 but never put onto the Blog. I publish it now to give a little continuity to what has been posted above)

Well it happened!

As stated in the previous post about the areas which are to be the patio, terrace and the summer kitchen the work of preparation to create them was completed and only the concrete needed to be dealt with. We had calculated fairly carefully the quantity required and took for the first delivery what we had thought was the maximum amount a lorry could carry in one go – 6 cubic metres. Only a fairly short time is allowed for deliveries so we had to work as fast as possible to spread the material over the prepared area. And the amount delivered was inadequate it only covered four fifths of the terrace.

It was also a red hot day resulting in the concrete drying off very rapidly. So levelling it and then, at the critical moment, polishing it proved very difficult. The latter indeed proved almost impossible for the last parts that we did requiring the concrete to be sprayed.

Thinking ahead we had a discussion with the driver of the lorry about how to deliver the concrete for the kitchen floor as it will be impossible to get a lorry very close to the doorway into it. The answer will be to use a pump system, but of course this will involve an extra cost in the delivery. And the driver also said that actually the maximum load was 7.5 cubic metres.

So for the next stage we ordered up that amount and went through the same process of laying it in the patio and summer kitchen areas as well as finishing off the terrace. This time the weather was a little cooler and also the majority of the work could be done whilst it was shaded from direct sunlight. A much pleasanter experience therefore. The results of all this can be seen in the photos above which you could compare with the ones in the last but one posting.

Now the task is to crack on with the kitchen in terms of fixing sufficient support for the roof so that we can take out all the support from the floor and then do the concreting – which will be the other half alluded to in the title of this post. To that end the new oak beam, which can be seen on the patio, which we bought a week ago will have to be manoeuvred into position at first floor level. Given that the beam weighs approx 1 tonne this is going to be a daunting and therefore slow task!