We have a helper! BJ, the brother of our friend Nikki, is here to help for the summer. BJ drove up with his RV last week and set up camp. We’re very excited to have another pair of hands, especially for the heavy lifting.
To prevent BJ from leaving any time soon, we fenced him in.
Actually, the fence is to keep the cows out of the construction zone. They had been getting into things (even though there is nothing to eat but dust in that area), so we decided it was time to put up a fence. We happened to have a lot of electric fencing material in storage from a deer/garden fence we never built. In addition, Keith, the local rancher and owner of the cows, gave us a solar powered fence charger, some posts, and some advice. One calf has gotten through the fence so far (unphased). Other than that, our fence seems to be working well.
Sam and BJ started building up a low area in front of the building. This was a good exercise for BJ to familiarize himself with some of the machines.
Alas, the concrete is dry, and we can get back to more pressing work. The spacers from the forms left large indentations on the top surface of the wall. Matt stopped by to grind those out since that face will be visible from the inside of the building. Most of the marks came out. The deeper impressions will get filled in later when the floor is poured.
After Matt left, we started preparing the wall for painting. We scraped, brushed, and pressured washed the wall to remove the dust and loose concrete chips.
And then the three of us started painting. We used an asphalt emulsion to give the exterior surfaces a waterproof seal. We started with the footing to make sure we liked the appearance of the asphalt. We were concerned at first because the paint looked brown. The paint was extremely thick too and looked like melted chocolate.
When we returned the next morning, we were happy to see that it dried black. So, we kept painting…
… and painting. The concrete is slightly porous and the paint left a lot of little holes, so we had to give it a second coat to properly seal it.
We finally finished and celebrated by going to the annual rodeo in Glenwood, just up the road from us.
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