Bear with me. I know concrete may not sound like the most exciting subject in the world. I also know that Portland cement is not exactly the most environmentally friendly building material around. But we’ve been blown away by how useful it is, and how easy it is to do small jobs around the house with it. I confess that for years I assumed concrete work was something you had to pay a professional to do, but that’s just not true.
A man and his wheelbarrow. (Cheers for the shirt, Paul.)
Our first job was pretty modest: after the work on our new bathroom, the trench through the yard had messed up some of the garden borders. So we made a new one. It’s not going to win any awards for style, but it works.
Lime-washed concrete garden border. Our very first concrete job!
Then we really got started. In the courtyard, the stairs up to the garden had a strange first step that was twice as tall as it should have been, making the stairs very awkward. So we built a new step, out of formed concrete with wire mesh for reinforcement, and tiled it to look like the others.
That bottom step is new. Much more comfortable to walk up the stairs now!
We also made a new curved concrete ramp for the door to the barn, and a new sill for the kitchen window (the previous one had crumbled when they took the old window out).
This used to be a sudden step down to the barn floor level. Curved ramp makes it easier to roll things in and out of the barn.
New window needed a new concrete sill. Further plasterwork needed around the edges…
We’ve even started on some bricklaying, adding a few courses to a wall at the front of the house to help with privacy. No photos of that yet, though.
Concrete is of course a bit grey, so I thought I should add some photos of more colourful stuff. Here’s another insect visitor to our garden: a praying mantis that helpfully sat right next to one of our outside lights one night and watched us as much as we were watching him.
Praying mantis wants in on the photography action.
And some shots of local places, thanks to our visitors Berkan and Sofie who dragged us out of the house for a bit.
Harbour at Güzelçaml?.
Evening street scene in Eski Do?anbey, a conservation village nearby.
G’day Jason and Sirem
Hope this finds you both well.
Jason: I am mighty impressed. Your skills in the concreting department seem to have way exceeded those of your old man. Hope the development is going well.
Marg and I are currently in Cochem on the Mosel River in Germany. Beautiful part of the world. Won’t see you this trip but hope to catch up in the next year or two.
Cheers
John
Thanks, John. Possibly it’s because I am working on projects smaller than entire boat ramps. :)
Hope you’re enjoying Germany. Look forward to welcoming you here when things are a bit more advanced!
I am impressed with the concrete. I too have always assumed you needed to “get a man” to do concrete. I’m quite inspired. For my own man-meets-masonry challenge, next weekend I’m getting a delivery of hot tarmac to fix a load of potholes in the lane. Apparently it cools down in about two hours, after which it forms a giant solid lump if you haven’t got it down and rolled. Tick tock! But seeing your pictures is making me think what we can fix with concrete at our place…
Cheers! It’s definitely addictive. And good luck with the tarmac — concrete is not quite so much time pressure.
nice man-work
what ratio did you use for your mix?
Thanks. The mix was your classic one part cement to three parts sand, plus water as necessary.
Couldn’t have done it without the shirt. ;)
3:1! it’s a classic! solid as a rock
what kind of sand? sharp?
Now you’ve got me. I don’t know for sure, but looking at all the chunky particles in it I’d say it was equivalent to sharp sand.