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siliconshamanSo, after yet another hiatus due to weather and a doctors appoint (just a check up) I'm back at work on the workshop.
Got the vertical posts installed, although not concreted in, and the lower sills or horizontals in place, bolted down so they hold the uprights.
Although all the up rights were cut to the same length 240cm (7'10.5") to allow plenty of leeway in bedding them in, not all of them ended up going down to the same depth. The soil here is FULL of building rubble from when the tore down the pit bath-house and other pit head buildings and then, rather than cart it away, they bulldozed it flat and put a lawyer of top soil over and THEN built the houses on top. So, go down more than a few inches and you hit a jumble of bricks and old concrete bits. Especially at the back, where they shoved all the dirt to level up to the same ground level as the garden. The road is a good couple of feet lower than 'ground level' for the house and garden. So, I can dig down to yellow glacial bolder clay near the house, but can only get a foot at most where I'm putting in the rebuilt workshop. And I have to fight all the way for that! I end up using my crowbar more than a spade.
Then there's the shape...
That corner is difficult. It's where three gardens meet, but not evenly. So, the workshop which I built level with our property line, sits at a weird angle to both the road and the border of the place behind us...
Ok, yes I could've just built it square, but then I'd lose a good few feet of floor space. The board that dissects that corner is more-or-less where the back wall of the workshop would be if it was just a straight rectangular box.
Anyway, next step will be to level off the dirt, and drop it a few inches, then install the paving stones where the original floor leaves off, and concrete the rest to the top of the wooden horizontals. I'm going with the dry pour method, i.e layout the dry ready-mix concrete, and water it well before smoothing it over. It's easier and gives a better result. The trick is to do it a bit at a time, and add it in thin layers watering between layers. You just have to be careful not to overwater, enough to dampen it, but not turn it into a slurry. But a hose with a variable jet nozzle that includes 'mist' and 'shower' as settings makes that a breeze!
It's amazing what you can learn from youtube... sure beats mixing up bucket loads of traditional 'mud' aka wet concrete, and then carting them around.
Got the vertical posts installed, although not concreted in, and the lower sills or horizontals in place, bolted down so they hold the uprights.
Although all the up rights were cut to the same length 240cm (7'10.5") to allow plenty of leeway in bedding them in, not all of them ended up going down to the same depth. The soil here is FULL of building rubble from when the tore down the pit bath-house and other pit head buildings and then, rather than cart it away, they bulldozed it flat and put a lawyer of top soil over and THEN built the houses on top. So, go down more than a few inches and you hit a jumble of bricks and old concrete bits. Especially at the back, where they shoved all the dirt to level up to the same ground level as the garden. The road is a good couple of feet lower than 'ground level' for the house and garden. So, I can dig down to yellow glacial bolder clay near the house, but can only get a foot at most where I'm putting in the rebuilt workshop. And I have to fight all the way for that! I end up using my crowbar more than a spade.
Then there's the shape...
That corner is difficult. It's where three gardens meet, but not evenly. So, the workshop which I built level with our property line, sits at a weird angle to both the road and the border of the place behind us...
Ok, yes I could've just built it square, but then I'd lose a good few feet of floor space. The board that dissects that corner is more-or-less where the back wall of the workshop would be if it was just a straight rectangular box.
Anyway, next step will be to level off the dirt, and drop it a few inches, then install the paving stones where the original floor leaves off, and concrete the rest to the top of the wooden horizontals. I'm going with the dry pour method, i.e layout the dry ready-mix concrete, and water it well before smoothing it over. It's easier and gives a better result. The trick is to do it a bit at a time, and add it in thin layers watering between layers. You just have to be careful not to overwater, enough to dampen it, but not turn it into a slurry. But a hose with a variable jet nozzle that includes 'mist' and 'shower' as settings makes that a breeze!
It's amazing what you can learn from youtube... sure beats mixing up bucket loads of traditional 'mud' aka wet concrete, and then carting them around.
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