Idle hands...

Are nowhere to be found around here! I swear, Bill is trying to kill me. We have been working our collective asses off, and finishing up the jobs left and right. Yay! and Boo! At least we have some money in the bank to make payroll, but damn we are tired.

Just for the record, we do work in hell. Bill once told one of the guys on the crew that he was El Diablo Blanco, and he owned his soul. The poor guy never came back. I don't even think he picked up his final check. Working for the devil. HA!

We did a small patio for a distant relative of Bell Starr. He was very nice, if a bit odd. His wife made things simple for us by wanting only the base color with release. He wanted several highlight colors, but she overruled him. Excellent! We also did a little job for a previous customer. She had a gate put up on her drive, and we had to wreck out a strip for the conduit to go under the slab. We put it back with a nice paver brick pattern. She was easy too. Nice lady :) She says she will be calling us to replace the entire drive. Oh goodie :-P We are working now on another add on for a previous customer. It is tiny, so two days at most! Then we go up to Owasso to do a patio for a friend. She had a beautiful pergola installed, and we are doing the leaf pattern under the open end and a slate skin on the other. It is a bit bigger, bur still not over two days. Coolio!

Remember the job for the family friends? Wellll it is done. Hooray! We are hoping that that was our yearly PITA job. Believe it or not, the damn pump blew up on us...again! We pumped three days. The first day, we had an excellent pump jockey. His name is Randy, and he is the man! We only had one clog, and that is great. The second day, we had the newest driver they have, and man, did he make our lives miserable. First off, he was late, so the pump was not completely set up before the mud arrived. I mean holy hell. It is hard enough to pump a job without having the mixer sit and spin, heating the mud up, and making our job even harder. He finally got his shit together, and started pumping. He put waaay too much slick pack (a runny substance that makes the concrete move through the pump easier) in the hose. Think a huge bucket full of runny snot, and you will have the right image in your mind. We got one good push through, and then the sucker clogged up. He had so much pressure on the pump that, you guessed it, the hose nearest the converter burst. It blasted the whole side of the newly painted house with mud. Grrreat! Love you. Not! So, on top of the mud sitting for an hour before we even started, now we had to wait for this goober to replace the burst hose, and start again. After multiple clogs, we finally got it pumped out. The first of the pour was by now, getting hard fast. We struggled all day long with this pour, and we got our collective asses kicked. Bill is a fricking genius as far as making a "mistake" better. Our first rule is - it isn't a screw up if you can fix it. He fixed a bunch of stuff on that pour. The poor guy ended up having to hand grind a big section, but he did a great job.

Long story short, it is finished, and she loves it. Her hubby came out and told us that it was better than he imagined it could be. He had had his doubts from the first day, but I think he was pretty happy with it.

Here are some pics.

This slab was hand tinted with about three colors, not including the base color, and the highlighting release. It made for a nice effect. I think it is beautiful. I do not want to do this pattern again any time soon. It's a pain to bring two areas together and make them match. Ick. This is the "cave". It was the biggest pain in the ass I have done in a long time. No room to work. We had to make bridges from 2x4's and inch our way through it. Turned out well though

There you have it. Thank goodness it is finished. I hope they enjoy it :)

I am so far behind. More later :)