Owner Building a Home - Day 39 - Sheeting and Pouring

Today promised to be hot before the sun even rose and it was.  Really hot.  Not as bad as tomorrow but hot enough to sweat in about .0076 seconds.  Oh, and the joy of sweating is only eclipsed by the joy of cutting something and having all the sawdust glued to you for the rest of the day.  Lovely.

Anyhow, heat aside, today we continued working on the roof.  Just a reminder, the roof is actually on the ground so it is super easy to do the work that is normally done waaaaaay up in the air.  I will gladly pay for a large crane to come and move the roof into place if it means I can keep my feet on the ground.  Mr.E helped me continue to add all the bracing required to keep all the trusses in the exact right spot.  I think we have most of the bracing complete.  While we were doing that, Mr.W and Jay were ensuring both gable ends were plumb and were sheeting the back side of the roof.  Once again, when you are working on the ground, it is quick and easy work.  Tomorrow morning Jay will go and nail all the sheeting solid as it was just tacked in place today.

Then in the afternoon the concrete trucks arrived so we could pour the garage floor.  Now, let me remind you that it was hot today.  It hit 31C with a humidex of 36C.  And when it is that hot, concrete likes to set up super quickly so it requires some fast work to ensure the garage floor has the right amount of concrete all over and is smooth and not drying all ugly.  Or disastrous.  But I think we avoided catastrophe thanks to Mr.W's quick work and Jay and Mr.E just doing what he said.  I stood around forcing them to drink water so they didn't collapse and eventually I started trowelling the area between the really cool floor drain Mr.W made and the opening of the garage.  Mr.W said to make it pretty - I just thought about icing a cake.  That's sort of what it is like - at least my take on it.  When you are pressed for time and the heat is ridiculous and the entire floor rests on your abilities, stress levels can rise and frustration can set in quickly.  Mr.W handled himself so well and did a fantastic job.  He told us all what to do and we did it and the garage floor is now complete.

After the pour was complete, Mr.W hung around for a few hours to babysit the concrete and continue to smooth it all out.  We took off to celebrate Jay's birthday with a little bit of ice cold A&W in those icy glass mugs.  It is exactly what a day like today called for.  Oh, and slurpees.  But those we had just as the concrete trucks arrived.  Today was definitely a slurpee day.

Some days you look back and you aren't sure you can see what you did.  Some days you can see a lot.  Today is one of those days where obvious progress was made.  The roof is half sheeted and the garage floor is poured.  Now the kids can't wait to pull out the scooters and race around on the pad.

And mostly for our records and so the plumber knows (pay attention, dad!) last night, from about 7-midnight, Jay was at the site with a gentleman showing him where to dig the line to trench the well water to the house.  It took a while and he was very tired when he stumbled in but the water line is now in.  He closed the trench up this morning.

Tomorrow is the hottest day of the week, forecasted to hit 36C (97F).  We are taking the day off, mostly because other things have worked themselves into the schedule.  That is just fine with us.  We will jump right back in on Thursday.