17, 18 & 19 Jan 08

Beams and corner blocks

17th Jan saw a very exciting start to the day, we had half of the beams delivered. Did I say how gorgeous they are? Well they are, we can't wait to get them into place.

The second half of the day was a little less exciting, we spent it mixing cement for the corner L-block, it always amazes me how much cement they take. Luckily we took our cement mixer over to do the hard work for us - thank you Rob and Kate for that little gem.

Cement garden

Bright eyed and bushy tailed we were back the next day and expecting to fill all three footing holes, I have to admire our enthusiasm and naivity. If only I'd had my camera handy for the first load of cement that went into this big hole. It was a mere trickle in the corner and our faces and hearts fell. We can't remember how many loads it took to finally fill but we spent the whole day doing it and that was with the help of the cement mixer.

Another day another hole?

Saturday morning and we were up nice and early and ready to leave home at 8am (unheard of for us). Our expectations were a little lower today which made it all the sweeter when we finished the first hole by 1pm. We stopped for a short lunch and then got back to the last hole which was finished by 4pm - pheeew!

After this epic cementing session I can see why Michael Reynolds suggests not to go too far off his basic plan. As he says in his books, you can do it but it will take more time and cost more. Well we used 8 bags of cement, 28 rebar, 300 litres of water (which we had to bring to the land) and lots of time and energy both digging the holes and filling them. I'm hoping that the end living space will be worth the diversion off plan.

above: last hole half full showing the rebar

below: last hole full with column spike in place