The cement crew was here bright and early this morning.  James and Colby got to see the trucks arrived and set up.  Patty brought our bench we sit on to wait for the bus right over to the edge of the driveway so the boys had front row seats to see it all unfold.  They asked questions about every piece of equipment they brought out.  I knew most of them so could answer most of their questions but the cement mixer didn’t get here before the bus had to pull away so I promised to take lots of pictures and videos for them.  Their bus is here now so will leave to show them the picture and will come back to show you.

Once they were set up and ready the cement truck arrived. 

This was the last thing the boys got to watch.  This is the long crane that delivers the cement from the truck to the site.  The boys were very impressed watching that unfold.  Wish they could have seen it work.  

The is the truck it comes from.  They put the cement into the back of the is truck and it is forced through that long hose right to the area they need the cement. 

They started by filling the trenches around the one side of the house.  One man directed the hose and the others came and filled it in.  There was one that had a funny little machine that mixed the cement in the trench to be sure there were no air pockets. 

Once they got the trenches along this side of the project they started filling in the main area, and they had to smooth that all out too.  Boy is that hot back breaking work.   They have worked all day at it with no breaks at all.

Notice the sort of grey colored board on the cement.  They slide that along to smooth out and keep it all the same height, then they go in by hand with a large trowel and smooth it more.  

At this point they were all done at this end, the only place left to fill in was the upper right corner, which is my bedroom and the garage.  Notice the one man in a green shirt, he is smoothing the back deck/slab.  That is where we will put Tyler’s new grill when it is done.  Now some of the men are removing the wooden frames.  Then they had to go all around and smooth over the sides and make sure there are no air pockets in the slab.  Some times there are a few stones that collect together and they had to take some cement and put on there to make it nice an tight and smooth. It was harder to remove the frames than to put them in.  By now the men must be tired, I can see why our men or boys don’t want to do this work.  Again to get anyone to work this hard and for this long they have to hire the Mexican men to do the work.  These men worked hard all day and haven’t even taken a lunch break yet. I guess once the cement starts being poured they really have to stick right to it.

Here they are pouring the last of the cement for the main slab, my room was last.  Notice the yellow machine on the left.  That is a polishing machine.  It makes the cement hard enough to walk on and makes the whole thing shine as if it were polished.  Now they have poured the garage and are polishing that.  The frames are all gone and packed away.  I got more pictures and several videos for the boys but don’t know how to upload them on to this blog so sorry I can’t bore you with those too.

We are all excited about this, now we wait until this cures and then they will start framing the house.  Three to four months more hard work and we are in!!!  Have a great day.