First move, off to what was Hall's and is now Jewson's at the end of the Upper High Street. I had estimated that I would need at most 0.25 meters of concrete but found that buying that amount of aggregate in small bags would be much the same as buying 0.6 meters in one of those big carrier bags that builders' merchants use. So one of those and five bags of French flavoured cement were delivered to our door shortly after - and as it turned out my estimate of 0.25 meters was way too low, so the small bag solution would have been both tiresome and expensive.
Second move, wait for an auspicious day to start concrete operations, a wait which turned out to be quite short as a Hanson's concrete tester's van turned up to test the concrete being delivered to the foundations of the building about to go up next to the Manor Green Road Costcutter. The concrete tester was making test cubes, something I have not seen done, let alone done, for many years. So this was quite good enough a sign for me to get cracking.
So onto the third move, which was to make the shutter for the first lift of the beam to hold back the garden at the back of the illustration, this being needed as our back garden slopes up from the house and the garage is built into a hole cut out from the slope. The guts of this shutter was the upper shelf recovered from the shed, a handy piece of 8 by 1 (before finishing that is). A piece of chipboard divides the beam into two halves, to allow for a bit of movement, one undesirable side effect of which was that the two halves of the beam do not quite match. Patch the gaps with some mortar on day 1. Pour the concrete on day 2, the mixing of which in the tray bottom left vastly easier than it would have been in the bucket in the pictures offered by Professor Google and in the course of which I noticed that the leading edge of my not much used shovel is starting to fray. They couldn't last very long if you were using them all day every day.
Next move was to make the shutter for the front beam to tidy up what had been the rather rough concrete base for the shed, at the front right of the illustration, the guts of which was a plank of 12 by one quarter inch tacked onto a slightly too short and slightly too narrow plank of 8 by 2 (sawn). The former was a handsome piece of red pine recovered from the back of a piece of north London furniture, quite an antique in its way, something which would cost a lot to replace. But sadly, I had no better use for it, so better to get some value out of it rather than wait while it caught wood worm. The latter was an off-cut from the Epsom sand pit, of similar design but not nearly so successful as the Norwich sand pit, this probably being the result of aging children rather than any significant difference between the two. All propped up by some chunks of mock stone masonry which used to do service behind the pond, further up the garden. This shutter was a better fit than the first, so I was able to pour the concrete on day 1, an operation only marred by a failure to tamp the front right corner adequately, a fault which will need to be patched in due course.
Cover concrete with damp cloths once it has gone off and water regularly.
Picture snapped on the day of the second pour while I was waiting for it to go off.
PS: if you have never seen a mould for a concrete test cube, ask Professor Google about 'concrete test cube' to see more pictures of and about them than you are likely to want to look at. Cast steel to ensure the cubes are of an exact and reliable size. Must cost a fair bit to buy.
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