Back in action

I was in the garden late this morning and beginning to think that today was going to be yet another lost day when a large truck came round the bend. As it was lumbering up the road I was wondering if there was any possibility that it might be heading for my place and it turned out that it was.

When I went up to investigate I found that it was a load of sand and the driver confirmed that it was for my house’s floor-levelling screed. First he unloaded a pallet of cement using the Hiab hoist on the back of his truck and then he moved the truck a bit so he could drop the sand to one side where it would be convenient to mix concrete and close enough for it to be manually barrowed into the house.

Just as he was getting ready to leave a white van carrying two workmen and towing a concrete mixer arrived and it turned out that they were the ones who would be mixing and laying the concrete.

After the truck had left they moved their van and got themselves ready to start work.

A while later, I went up to see how they were doing. It turned out that they’d started by attaching protective plastic tape all around the bottoms of the walls to prevent them being wetted and damaged by the concrete. Having completed the floor in bedroom two, they were busy in bedroom one and while the younger man was mixing and barrowing the concrete in, the older of the two was painstakingly laying the screed by hand.

They’d finished and gone just after 5.00 pm leaving the site clean and tidy and their concrete mixer and tools behind ready for tomorrow.

Here are a couple of shots of the protective plastic tape that they had attached to the bottoms of all of the walls.

Today they completed the floors in all three bedrooms and the bathroom and had made a start on the top end of the corridor.

It’s a very labour-intensive job and I think that it’ll take them at least a couple more days to complete the whole house as there’s a heck of a lot more to do. I’ve seen floor screeds being laid on Youtube and they’ve been made much wetter and allowed to find their own level using a vibrator.

It’s slower and must be more difficult to do it by hand and get the level right (the original floor slab was much lower at the bedroom end, especially in the far corner of bedroom one) and it will be admirable if this workman gets a perfect level throughout. I’m sure he will…