Concrete Floors

The sun was out today! What a great change that makes. Let's get to it anyway as I'm a bit later starting this evening.

Sunrise through the trees as I took Rosie to school

Bekir starts mixing up cement for the day

Thelma brings her ball to be played with

First section done and smoothed to the edge

Getting started on the next section

Bekir makes sure everything is perfectly level

Two sections done and smoothed

First thing this morning I had a message from Halil that he had broken down on the way to our house. Fortunately Thomas was available and he was able to tow his car from where it was broken down, to get fixed, and made it in not that late. When he came to collect the Thomas he dropped Bekir who got stuck in mixing up cement and shortly afterwards Halil was also there. All day this is what the men have done; mixed cement then carried it in buckets up into the roof to lay it down on the floor, Halil doing the lifting and Bekir does the smoothing. They got the first two sections done very quickly indeed and were then moving to the part of the floor which was most eroded, and needed the most cement to get it to level.

Sweeping up all the dust they can

Copious amounts of water onto the floor

Adding cement dust and scrubbing it in with a broom

The next section is begun

Loads of progress today on the floor

I caught the full process they go through in pictures during the afternoon which I thought was interesting. First of all Bekir swept as much of the dust as he could away from the area he was going to work on, putting it into a bucket to take away. Then he got a big bottle of water and threw it all over the floor before grabbing a broom and brushing hard while Halil scattered cement dust into the water. This was then mixed in using the broom and this both enhances the "grab" between the old floor and the new cement and also captures any dust that would otherwise prevent that grab. It was then back to Halil carrying buckets and Bekir spreading it out. By the end of the day they had done a fair amount of the floor at this end of the roof, and pretty much covered all of the big dip where the worst of the water damage from the years of the property being empty had occurred.

So there it is. For the next few blogs you'll have the pleasure of Angela doing the updates as I'm going away for a bit. Thanks for reading!