Things moved quickly this past week.

April 7, 2015

The concrete buttresses in the basement stand in about 9 inches of gravel, then a plastic membrane (you can see the edge of it along the wall) and then a layer of gravel to hold the membrane in place. The membrane keeps the moisture below the dirt floor.

Curious dogs watching the progress. In this photo you can see the corner of the new steel door that will give us access to the basement. Brian is standing in the basement entrance. Bentley looks a little suspicious of the whole thing.

April 9, 2015

The steel door is now set in place.

The hole is cut in the back of the barn for the garage door. You can see some of the old horse stall hardware on the left side of the photo. The white panel on the right is where a door used to be.

April 10, 2015

The old floor is sealed with a durable woven polypropylene underlay to go beneath the concrete.

April 13, 2015

Jason laying the plastic pipe, that will carry the hot water from the furnace, that will create the in-floor heat in the concrete slab.

All of the heating pipes enter the barn/garage through this opening that leads into the carriage house.They will be thread through a conduit that will be embedded in the concrete slab that will be the new floor of the carriage house. I guess we'll have to stop calling it a carriage house soon. It will be the connector between the barn/garage and house and be used as a laundry/utility room.

Lots of loops

This used to be a door. It's been filled in and will be shingled over. We'll let the shingles age and discolour naturally so it'll be a few years before it blends in completely. You can see the remnants of a large radiator that used to be in the dog kennels in the barn. They had to break it into two pieces to remove it. It was so heavy it took two guys to drag just one half of it.

Yes, that's a trellis they're putting on the back wall. But it's not for flowers. The trellis creates a space between the cedar shingles and the wall and allows them to breath.

Dorian removes the last of the old outside light wiring. You can see the wiring for the new lights just on the left side of the old door frame. The concrete ramp you see going up to the door will be removed with a jack hammer later. The door and the two smaller windows to the right of it will all be shingled over. You'll never know they were there since all the shingles on the back of the barn will be new.

April 13, 2015

The cement is poured and the guys worked away all evening at smoothing it out. They went over it with the power trowel and then let it set up for a while and then went back at it again. They repeated this until satisfied with the finish. They left at about 10:00 p.m.

They needed a couple trowels for this job.

The floor will be fine to walk on and we can start storing some things in the barn/garage in 24 hours but it will be 26 days before we'll be able to park cars in here.