The Design is Concrete

We were all set for concrete. Both buildings have three phases of concrete- the footing, stem wall, and floor. Matt began by setting up the forms for the footings.

The concrete trucks arrived early the next morning before the sun came up.

Halfway through, we had an unexpected visitor looking for a distressed calf. What a scene!

(The calf was eventually found and reunited with its mother.)

The footings for the shed were poured next. The truck couldn’t reach the back corner, so the crew improvised with some plywood.

Rebar ties for the stem wall get placed vertically in the footings while the concrete is still wet. Sam and I marked the door locations, where the rebar ties would be omitted. We weren’t quite awake yet and mismeasured multiple times. Luckily its easy to “erase” lines in wet concrete.

Once the footings cured, Matt’s crew set up forms for the stem walls.

Bright and early again, the concrete trucks arrived. This time they used a boom to pump sludge into the narrow walls.

Before the stem walls were poured, we hired an electrician to route conduit under the floors and in the walls. There is conduit going to almost every future outlet and electrical panel. When we built the shop, we ran miles of wire from the panels through the stud walls to the outlets. Running the conduit in the concrete will spare us from drilling hundreds of holes in the wood studs, saving a days of work. Plus, someone else is doing it!

Only the floors remained! In preparation, Matt’s crew filled the interior with fine gravel and compacted it to achieve a perfectly level surface.

Then they set the rebar.

The floors were poured over multiple days.

Sam and I had seen enough concrete action by this point. We watched them trowel the shed for a bit and went inside.

Half an hour later, Sam got a call from Matt… “Can you get control of your cat?” Apparently Buster marched across the length of the shed moments after it was troweled smooth. And he didn’t just leave a trail of cute paw prints. The “prints” were several inches deep! The crew fixed the floor before it dried, and we dragged Buster into the house. I guess he ingested some concrete because his legs and paws were clean by the time I found him. He was not happy to be taken away from the action, but at least he didn’t get sick. (I unfortunately don’t have pictures of the incident.)

The floors of both buildings cured before another cat or cow threatened them. They burnished and sealed them.

Then they saw-cut lines in the floors to prevent cracking. Or so they tried. The saw reached the end of its lifetime after the second cut. The crew returned the following morning with a brand new saw and carried on.