Death by concrete!

I swear, my hubby is trying to kill me. This winter has been very slow for us, so we have been in the office drinking coffee, playing video games and shopping on Ebay. In other words, we have been lazy and are out of shape. Now generally, for someone who aspires to win the lotto and become a bon bon queen, this is not a huge problem. Unfortunately, for someone who makes their living working with concrete, this is *not* a good thing. The little leaf patio we did was a warm up for our current job. It was not enough of a warm up.

This one is in a brand new housing addition. Fortunately, there are no houses yet, so at least we don't have to work around people living there. It is in the middle of the road, and is a large crosswalk/intersection with islands that will have grass or trees or some other vegetation I suppose. The bad thing is that the place we are working is also directly in the middle of the entire addition, so other trades want to drive through. Apparently nobody has told them there is another way to access the east side, so as we are trying to work, people are driving through. Not only is it annoying, it is dangerous. It's hard to hear when you are standing right by a mixer that is running, so if they aren't paying attention when they drive through, they might just run you down :( Not to mention it is absolutely no fun at all to be holding a big float with 18 feet of handles on it and have some jerk whack the end of the handles as they drive by. Inconsiderate boors!

This project is two colors, which is a monumental pain in the ass, especially considering the colors - Brick red and cream. It is possible to fix the cream on the red, but if you get red on the cream, you're screwed. There is a red cobblestone border around the entire edge of the slab, with strips through the ends on both sides. The color we use is a dry powder that is thrown on the surface and troweled in while the concrete is wet. You really should try this yourself, especially when the wind is blowing 30 mph. There is much swearing while doing this. This pour is sort of hour glass shaped, so the centers are curved, which requires all of this to be colored by hand, since the shield we use will not bend. This means more of my most dreaded activity, crawling on my hands and knees. Also, because of the curve, all of the cobblestones had to be cut in by hand. I got to do this. Yay! er..not. While I am doing this, DH and the helper are finishing the big cream colored fields. Fortunately, for us, the fields are just colored and broomed, and are not stamped. We would have been in real trouble if they had been stamped. Between all the hand work, and the damn wind, we barely got done in time. This is what people in the concrete business call "getting your ass kicked". As it was, it was a 13 hour day, with about 5 hours of crawling for me. With only 3 people on the crew, we were whupped puppies by the end of the day.

While we were cleaning up the tools and loading them in the van, there was a crew of hoodlums, er landscape workers, getting the area behind the curbs ready for sod. They watched us finish the last of the concrete, and were there while we were loading up our tools. They had moved a bit up the road by the time we left, so we figured our slab would be safe. **WRONG** Some one of those asshats went back and walked on the wet concrete with his gunboats, leaving some definite footprints. A fossil leaf now and then doesn't bother most people, but distinctly modern sneaker tracks don't fly. If I could get those jerks all together, and match up the footprint to some one's shoe, I would be kicking some one's ass. Unfortunately, we probably couldn't get them all down there, and the one that was missing would be the culprit. Ah the hazards of concrete.

I don't have pictures yet. My camera batteries were too low to take any. I will try to remember to get some next time we go out.