The Sad Pad of Dispair..OR...Oy, My Achin' Back!

We have finally begun major renovations of the homestead by arranging with one of the local concrete companies to bring us four and a half square yards of dinosaur poo from which we made a 15'x25' pad to place the "build it yourself" storage buildings that have been sitting in the front yard for the past two years upon.

I say dinosaur poo because concrete should flow like gravy, not sit in a large, damp pile looking like some huge herbivour with bad dietary habits paused in your yard. The concrete delivery person wasn't the least bit interested in the fact that it wasn't the consistency it was supposed to be...he just wanted to, you should pardon the phrase, dump his load and go.

Sooo...picture Mom, Bree, and me out with two shovels and a garden rake trying to move a ton of wet poo into a frame. Not a pretty sight! We eventually had to take the old gaming table, tie it to the garden tractor, and have Bree sit on the table as we dragged it back and forth across the concrete in an attempt to make it smooth. Didn't work.

There are huge cavetations, you can see where the original pile was at because the entire pad slopes away from that point, and it in general looks like Poo in a form. But it is done.

Next, we hired a couple of young men to construct the buildings for us. They didn't show up until late in the afternoon on the first day and puttered around doing nothing more than sorting out the parts and mis-assembling the base frame. They didn't show at all the second day. The third day Mom and I went to make our run to town and passed them in town. They waved and smiled like nothing was wrong.

When we got home we began construction on the first building ourselves and had 90% of it done in about five hours. We went out the next day and finished it up in around three hours and saved ourselves a bunch of money in the process. Now that we know how they go together, Mom is going to do pre-assembly of the base and corner sections, and the roofing struts, and we can get the rest of the building up in an afternoon.

Now, understand, you can see daylight under three of the four corners of the existing building. We are going to have to go in with a level and several bags of sacrete as well as spray foam insulation and make the buildings truly level but hey, we can start moving stuff out of the house and into the storage units as soon as it stops raining!

We hope to have the other building up and everything moved in the next couple of weeks so we can start repairs on the house. Anyone (within reason) who wants to show up and help is welcome! I'll fix lunch and we'll have a good time!!