It's set in concrete now!

We recently purchased a 10'x12' greenhouse, which isn't here yet and is, of course, on back order. We don't know when it will get here because they keep pushing the date back, those silly people. But in order to have a nice home for it, we made a form and poured a concrete foundation.

The same day, we got a guy we know to come up with his bobcat and do what is commonly called 'work' around the property to help us with some problem areas. We had some straight edges that needed smoothed out and our driveway badly BADLY needed straightened out. I will post pictures of the work Joe did for us later.

The picture above is the 'before' of the place where the greenhouse is going. The brown thing is our incinerator, where we burn our paper trash. The pile of rocks on the left is...well a pile of rocks we got from the local quarry. It was free! It is their junk rock (below), they can't do anything with it because of the quartz veins running through it, can you believe it? So we asked for it so we could build some nice rock walls with it in the future, and they were kind enough to just drop it off for us.

All this is in the big hole that was supposed to be the site for our new garage, but since that was dug out we decided to rebuild the garage where the current one is and do things a little differently. So this is a perfect place for a greenhouse or two, sheltered, flattened already.

The bank in the picture above, right also was to come out and get smoothed out (see below).

As for the foundation, we had a lot of big PVC drainpipe that Matt used for the foundation (see below). It worked out, this will easily drain water away from the greenhouse while making it so we didn't have to buy a lot of wood to use instead. A money-saving idea! We likes these, yes we does.

Matt estimted 5 yards of concrete and the truck was due for 8am on Saturday and lo! That's when they arrived. And they actually made it up the driveway! Will wonders never cease.

Notice the drain sitting up in the middle of the floor. That's 'crush n run' that they are standing on, it makes a good base.

That's Matt and his dad, Ray, and the guy from the concrete company on the right there. I didn't catch his name, let's call him Magnus.

Magnus actually pitched in quite a bit, even though I don't have any pictures of it.

(Left) And here it comes!

(Right) Making sure there's enough in the far corners.

(Left) Pulling it from the middle to the nearer corners. You can't see the drain, but it sits a few inches lower than the edge of the foundation. It was covered up with duct tape to keep the concrete from getting in, but they needed to make sure the floor sloped away from the drain so they had to keep pulling concrete from the middle to the edges.

(Right) Starting to skreet the floor. The skreet is resting on the drain in the middle and Matt is using it to flesh out the slope of the floor from the edges. Ray is still pulling concrete into the corners and to the edge.

(Left) Almost finished skreeting!

(Right) Pouring the ramp. Before the greenhouse will really be a greenhouse, we're going to be using it for a shed. We needed a place to empty our garage into, and this seemed like it would kill two birds with one stone. Now, we can empty the garage, tear it down and rebuild a new one AND then have a usable greenhouse afterwards instead of a shed that we'd have no future use for. A lot of the stuff in the garage will need to be moved using a dolly, hence the ramp.

(Left and below) Matt, smoothing out the already skreeted floor with a hand-held 'float' trowel.

(Left) Matt. Smoothing out the middle of the floor. Balancing on a 2x10. If he had lost his balance it would have been a MUCH better picture.

After this was finished, we all went next door where they were also pouring a floor in the basement.

We also purchases some concrete sealer to use on the floor. It is stained a nice rusty red color, we thought it would be a nice color.

Stay tuned, this weekend I will probably post pictures of the work Joe did to the driveway area.