Month: July 2021

New Shed Part 2: The Slab

The 60cm square pavers that made up the foundation of the old shed were layed on paving sand but it doesn’t seem that any effort was put into levelling the ground. We pulled them all up and started putting that right, but between those two line items we took a break to barbecue some vegetables and souvlaki and to enjoy the shade on the once-and-future shed site.

Yeah, the entire garden is in disarray. Next to my feet you might be able to make out the orange grade line we used as a datum to get to mostly level. You can also see some of the shitty pointing done to the wall at the railway cut (and which I also addressed in my week off from the labs):

Excavated and much closer to planar by the following weekend, the site was covered with an impermeable plastic sheet and loosely refilled with the pavers leaving space between for the poured concrete to fill and make the entire pier a continuous pier. Scrap boards were held in place with tent pegs at the borders and these lined with bricks to make the boundaries look like a traditional foundation while having the advantages of the slab. The framing of the floor joists will be bolted to the concrete thus pulling the outer frame tight against a waterproofing layer between wood and brick.

Ready to pour

The area is 8 feet by 10 feet (2.4 m x 3 m) and 4 inches (100 mm) deep but while we ordered in enough cement and aggregate fixings for the entire slab, I went cheap by lining the frames with old concrete pavers (thus saving half the materials for the patio and other projects). A last check that all was level and plumb before firing up the mixer (per fill, I put a whole bag of gravel, eyeballed about 70% of a bag of sand, and about 30% of a bag of cement for about a 3.5:2.5:1 gravel:sand:cement ratio).

The form took just under three hours of manic mix/pour/spread (with all three happening continuously) to fill and screed. Any larger footprint and I would have broken it into two or more pours (and put in expansion devices) but, even then, it would have helped to have an assistant.

Altogether, this is just shy of 2 tonnes of shed anchoring material. I feel every ounce of it in my back and shoulders. Crossfit can suck a bag of dicks.

6 more days curing and we can build on top of this. Hooray.

Week 29 Recap: Dodging Delta

Arrived at work at 8 Monday, set up some work to do for the day, then checked my email for fires to put out before commencing. First email up told me the MS student I was training Thursday tested positive for COVID Sunday so I wiped my workspace down with alcohol and headed home to work online. I tested negative and reconfirmed it Tuesday before heading in for the, now, abbreviated workweek.

“Per Ad Ardua Alta” roughly translates to “Overture, curtain, lights, this is it, we’ll hit the heights.”

And, an odd week it was. I put on the medieval ecclesiastical garb commensurate with my rank and graduate school of origin — actually, for the first time — and attended the Biosciences graduation ceremony. [I didn’t attend my ceremony at The University of Georgia — now almost 20 years ago — since I turned in my dissertation on a Monday, defended it Tuesday, made minor corrections Wednesday morning, and gathered signatures Thursday before boarding a plane with the wife and cat bound for 2 years in Amsterdam that Friday.]

Fines and fees: £60.50. Mileage: 21 with nothing especially long or interesting. Somehow, I also managed to put in an after-work hour-and-a-half on the shed project each day.

New Shed Part 1: The Takedown

The old shed — small, rotting away — was more porous even than when we first moved in.  We had other things on our plate but the time to rebuild is nigh. Above, the state of devastation in the garden as the old shed was methodically dismantle over the coarse of about 30 minutes.

A year ago last Sunday, this was the state of our doors

The plan is to follow the old wall at the railroad cut.  The current box is 6 feet by 5 feet and crammed full, a good thing since the packed contents are probably the only thing holding it up.

Last summer, we started cleaning up some of the doors from the house refurb to use on the shed.  Covered in lead paint, we had to strip these outside and with shitloads of PPE involved. I burned out an old heat gun working on one of these.

Shed roof is now the lean-to roof and everything in the shed had to be relocated

We also took down a brick shed at the back of the house, now temporarily replaced by a makeshift lean-to for temporary storage of the current shed’s contents.  This is next to “The Pile,” our longstanding, building-rubbish collection awaiting the next skip (link is to LAST year’s one).  Now that the old shed is down, we have enough shit around to justify ordering another skip and to clean up the garden a bit more.

Week 28 Recap: When Did Simple Desire Become A Sin?

There is an overwhelming longing to finish the house refurb as we start our 21st month in The Compound. We feel like this is normal but we have never set — nor abided by — the standards of others. The arbiters of taste and morality be damned.

We continue to work on indoor details because the pile, seen behind the rising cladding (made from 115 year old skirting boards formerly resident in the pile), precludes our enjoyment of the garden. In the coming four weeks our summer project will be to shift the old shed’s contents to this temporary structure (made entirely from scrap, mind you), tear down the old shed, add it to Skip #3 at the end of the month, and pour a slab onto which we will build the new, larger shed and a wee patio.

This is less ostentatious than mildly ambitious. The garden is small but the aerial Google map of this buurt was recently updated with our stuff in the garden blurrily visible. The brick shed on the back of the house (torn down June 2020) is still attached to the house in this shot and our blue patio table is visible with the shadow of the folded parasol on it. A larger shadow on the lawn is cast by the folded down clothesline and tells me that the date is late spring and the time is mid-to-late morning (someone was home as the upstairs bathroom window is open):

We may have missed our window of Summer opportunity, though. The first days exceeding 25 degrees C (77 F) were this week and that may be what passes for the heat wave this year. We are natives of the sultry, humid lands of the subtropical southeastern US; moderation in all things is an unfair demand in this hellishly temperate climate.

The foot injury seems to have eased and I’ve managed to run enough to sweat a few times. Fines and fees: £72.67

Week 27 Recap: Stress

The stress fracture in my foot finally started easing Monday and staying on codeine all week kept me low key despite also really productive at work. Mileage, therefore, is mostly walking until Sunday when I did a DIY supply run to a couple of places 3 miles apart. Foot shows promise…third false start this year so don’t know what to look forward to.

Watching England v Italy as I type. England are playing a guy named Trippier and another named Stones. Fantastic match, with 7 minutes left in extra time and tied 1-1.

Did various stuff and made plans for more stuff imminently. Details may follow.

Shameful and shameless this week … fines and fees £151.67. Crikey, I must lead a better life. Starting …

… now?

The match ended. I loathe the penalty shoot out and think the extra time should continue until a winner is found. When I was young I thought this should continue around the clock with substitutes requiring at least 12 hours between return to field, but nowadays I think 6 hours per day until it is settled. Fer fuck’s sake, do it.