Old House. Brown Dog

After all the effort of getting ready for the big cement pour and Jose warning me that I did not want to be hungover for it, I was expecting a really hard day. To my surprise and delight, this was the easiest project ever. At 9 am the cement mixer arrived, apparently cement mixers and the actual cement truck do not come as a package deal so you have to rent both. I think this is so they can charge you more. The mixer guy showed up early and the cement was late, so we spent an hour or so chatting with John the cement guy and his foreman Dozer. I of course few the crew and Dozer enjoyed lots of snacks.  When the truck arrived we got ready to roll. Jose poured with the giant hose, John hit the remote to start and stop it, and I used a vibrator (a tool you sickos) to mix up the cement. It was the dream team and we were done in like 12 minutes. I was pretty shocked to be honest. Once Dozer and John left, Jose smoothed over the concrete and I added rebar posts into the tubes.  After...

I was under the impression that we rented the dingo a few weeks back to avoid doing any digging ourselves... as usual, I was wrong. Jose and I are many things, but adults isn't always one of them. So we rented this dingo to dig holes (read about him here ) but then forgot we had like two weeks where we would not be able to do any more work on the deck, so naturally a lot of dirt filled back into the holes. Cool, cool.  So last week we got back at it and lined up a cement truck to come Friday morning. This meant we had to get our acts together with these holes on Thursday. I took some meetings from parking lots in Jose's truck, but for the most part we cleared dirt from the dingos holes and built forms using cement tubes and spare wood which would become the home for the concrete. Sounds easy, but it actually took about 11 hours, which is a long damn day doing prison work. Jose only gave me one snack break, so I was pretty grateful for the meetings I had to go into town for.  L...

Over Memorial Day weekend, my trusty assistant Jose and I officially dug into our deck project (pun intended). As with most projects in the mountains it was quite a process, but we had fun as we always do. The first step, after determining the layout, was digging some big ass holes for the foundation of the deck. We thought about hiring this part out, but since we can't even afford the materials, we decided to save a few bucks and do it ourselves, which meant a lot of driving. The week before Memorial weekend, the cabin saw three feet of snow (you read that right) so it was anyone's guess if the ground was dry enough to dig the holes, so we drove up there Friday to investigate. It was indeed dry enough, so we hopped back in the car and drove all the way past Vail, which was the closest place to get the equipment we needed. That is about an hour and ten minute drive from the cabin. The equipment is named the dingo, which is about the cutest name I can think of for heavy machiner...