Concrete (How many posts about concrete does this make now?)

These pictures are from a couple of weekends ago when we poured the slab right in front of the main door, underneath the overhang, so that I could tile the entryway right up to it (the outermost tile being underneath the threshold of the door -if the door ever makes it here).






See the 2x4 in this picture? We used that to drag along the top of the form boards to get the right amount of concrete and to begin to smooth it off:



The "Energy Shield" in this picture is really a 'Concrete Shield' to keep the concrete from splashing back onto the tile that was already laid inside:


This is the next step to smoothing out:



And this long handled, huge tool is called a 'bull float.' Because it's big? And floaty on wet concrete? I guess so (that would be the scientific explanation):




And we poured a run down the side of the building, too. It's looking pretty mucky in this picture:



But it's starting to shape up here:


Most All of this concrete pouring has to do with water control. Old buildings stay in good shape when you take care of them; that's what we want.

Phase III and more about the tile...

Blogging has taken a back seat to Phase III: Preparing to Open.
[D, my multi-tasking abilities are stretched to the limit ;). ]

Tiling the floor was a glamorous job:


Now that it's finished (yes, and grouted, too), I find myself in an odd phase of tying up loose construction ends and beginning the process of papering/supplying the Coffee House into reality.

I'll try to avoid the nuts-and-bolts boring parts of paper (business licence, tax registration, etc..) business here; I'll say it's time consuming and leave it at that.

As far as construction loose-ends:
My metal roof (for the entryway overhang) was a week late for delivery. I got the call today that it has finally arrived, but it has arrived damaged -at least in part- so the damaged parts will be re-ordered and should be here by next Tuesday (the original order was 1 week late, so we'll see...).
The front door should be in by now, but it's not. Another week....?
The front end of the coffee/food prep area is laid out to my satisfaction (taking into consideration electrical, plumbing, efficiency, appliances, etc.), but I am still looking for a pastry display case to complete the layout.
The back end of the food prep/baking area is roughed-in, but not finalized.

There's more, too, but I'll get to some of those things in later posts.
For now, here are more tile pictures:

I am very pleased with the tile. Since my fingers and palms still have holes in them from the work (and my fingernails are just now beginning to recover), I'm not sure if I'm pleased because the job is over or because it looks good. Probably both, because it does look good.

Not grouted yet (but dusty):


If you've been following along, I mentioned finding a way to reduce my time when concreting in the cut-tile edge pieces. It's the Ziplock bag:

I filled it full of cement, cut the tip off one corner, and squirted the mud onto the floor where the edge piece was to be laid:

It was easier than trying to trowel the mud in with a screwdriver (or something of appropriate width).

This Ziplock trick is exactly the technique used to frost a cake (thanks, S, for teaching me something about that), except without a fancy patterned tip.

Oh, yeah, and icing doesn't have tiny rocks in it that prevent the bag's zipper from zipping tightly. That was so messy I didn't even take a picture of the exploded wet concrete bag.

Pouring Concrete (again)

I gave a slight mention to pouring more concrete, so although this is a couple of weeks behind us now, I'm still trying to catch up.

Here's the transit, used to determine how deep we had to dig to make an even grade from the floor on the inside to the area outside beneath the new overhang:


It was a Friday night, dark and late, but the concrete was ordered and ready for delivery Saturday morning at 7:30.

This picture was taken when it was even later and darker and PC is still digging:


Why hurry?
Because this is me:

And I was determined to get the tile in the front entryway done before leaving for Oregon.

I did - thanks in large part to PC and PR; I couldn't have done it without them.

Why Oregon? Well.... I am so far behind with blogging right now that you'll have to wait to hear about it, but I will say it was directly related to The 123 and it was well worth the trip (oh, and I can now honestly say that I can make the best coffee in the world!).

Tile

I am finished laying tile! All the edge pieces got mudded in today!
I am relieved.


Now I have to grout.

Pictures soon....

Tile Pictures

Thankfully, I'm much further along than when I took these pictures:











Yep, that's me:


I spent the weekend cutting most of the edge pieces; the tile is almost done, so I'll be able to catch up with the blogging.
We poured more concrete on Saturday morning, so I'll show you what that was all about, too.

Floor Tile

We've got quite the impressive mess in the parking lot.
Again.

In the last post I showed you the clean floor - and it's so clean because everything went outside to the parking lot (okay, some went upstairs, but not much).
I'm glad we were able to have a clean parking lot for Mother's Day and Memorial Day, but after that the outside mess multiplied.
It's temporary.

Here's inside looking out through the new door:



To where I was mixing mud:


My trusty drill and mixer blade. The same set-up I used to mix the buckets of drywall mud.




Here's a pretty good start:


I wear knee pads (I haven't thought to take a picture of those, yet), which decreases wear and tear on the knees, but I haven't found anything to help out with the back.
Or the fingers: The concrete dries up my skin and by the time the floor is ready to grout, all the water prunes up my damaged, cracked fingers and produces some pretty odd looking holes.
And the fingernails... let's just say they're looking kinda' rough.


I have more tiling pictures AND I had a brainstorm that really helped me out the other day for piecing in the edges. I'll tell you about that soon.

Floor Prep and Tile Layout

This is a floor scraper:


Because there is no size reference, I'll tell you that the blade is 14 inches wide. It's a thin piece of flexible metal -think razor blade- on a long, simple pipe handle.
It's a wonderful, back-saving tool and I wish I would have known about it a lot sooner.
I have spent several hours on my hands and knees with a hammer and small chisel to remove the old adhesive from the floor. And it's not just me - all three kids have put in time chiseling, too. That's a lot of time.
And then I found this floor scraper. (Duh.)
It works great, scrapes up everything in seconds and shows me all the imperfections that I have to fix either before (convex - hammer, chisel) or while (concave - concrete) tiling.

Clean floor - at last:


I wanted to start my tile from the front door - or rather, I wanted to measure out from the front door so everything ends up square and uniform at the entrance:


Looking closer, you can see my perpendicular starting lines:


Laying out tools, tile, and a water bucket with rags:


And then it was outside to mix mud (yep, I got pictures of that, too, but I'm just doing a quick catch up with blogs before getting back to work)....

Busy, busy, busy...

Just because I haven't been keeping up with the blog doesn't mean there's nothing going on. As a matter of fact, there's so much going on, I haven't had time to blog.

There is now a door-shaped hole in the wall.
The entryway roof is tar papered.
The interior floor is scraped down to bare concrete and the tiling has begun.

I'll be posting pictures soon....