WATCHING TWO THINGS...

 My jobs today?

Watch concrete dry, and wait for the man to arrive this afternoon to do the line cutting.

The lines are to stop it cracking on hot days, it gives the concrete a chance to expand.

ABOVE:  From a distance the concrete looks grey, up close and personal you can see the Black Oxide speckles.  It's lovely.

The second thing?

Watch grass grow...

ABOVE:  When I was watering the 'lawn' last night I noticed we had some small areas of grass emerging already.

That's pretty awesome, it's only been 6 days since we sowed it.  We were told it would take up to 10 days to germinate.  Must still be warm enough to get them seeds popping fast.

I'm thrilled to bits... it won't be long before it's all green again.

The past fews days have been a bit 'busy', with some quite early starts.  So I'm taking it easy today.  Nothing taxing on my agenda at all.

I shall probably go out late this afternoon to get?

Far out, I actually can't remember what I had on my 'To Get List' right now!  It will come back to me eventually.

Right, catch ya later.

I remembered!  Ain't lost me marbles after all.

Later on today I shall pop out to buy some Beer for the concrete guys.

Giovanni is coming back tomorrow to finish off around the heat pump and power cable/downpipe etc, so I want to give him and the guys some beer as a thank you.

WOO HOO!  The driveway looks good this morning.

I was worried all night that somebody would vandalise it in the middle of the night!

But nope, it's all good.

And past that danger now.

I've got a lot to do today.

Put my sewing room back to rights, and move some stuff around in the house.

Also, the room Keera uses is a freakin' mess!

Toys everywhere, bed a mess and so on.

So I've got that to tidy up as well.

I must be getting over the fatigue.... I've been on the go for two hours and still feel OK.

I've got the kid bedroom all tidy again, there were toys and Keera's clothes all over the place.

I've done a little cull of toys, there were just too many.

Then I moved on to the front bedroom.  That had to be emptied of my stuff (up to a point), because Brylee will be moving back here in a week or two.

Eventually, she will have to rent her own place, and be the leesee.  That way other people can't kick her out for batshit crazy reasons.

In the meantime, she will need to rent a storage unit for all her stuff.  There is simply NO ROOM here.

I'm taking a break now.  The sewing room can wait.

ABOVE:  The line cutter guy arrived to mark up the lines.  He will be back later on to actually cut them.  He said we could get cracks!  Bugger if that happens.

ABOVE:  Best thing... we can now walk on it.  No more climbing through the hole in the fence.  That was a minor, but not insignificant pain in the butt.
I don't do 'climbing' on ladders that well.

ABOVE:  Because there was a small crack forming on that corner, he did a cut using his small cutter.  Then he said it's still not quite ready for the rest to be cut, so he's off to another job, and will be back later on this afternoon.

Seems there's a precise 'time' when to do it, and NOT do it.  Who knew?  😂😉

It's lunch time... off to find something to eat.  

ABOVE:  Cutting the lines.  This process STOPS the concrete from cracking in unexpected places.

The man said we shouldn't get any cracks now.  That's a relief!  You don't pay thousands of dollars to get cracks do ya?

ABOVE:  Once the cuts were made, he water blasted it all.

Then once he'd left I washed it and brushed it to get the last residual dust off.

Tomorrow I will take a photo of it dry.  

I've had several neighbours and people walking past make very positive comments about our driveway.

It's such a relief to have it all done, and the driveway fiasco behind us now.

One week from now we can drive on it.  We will probably wait longer, cos that's just what we do.

Better safe than sorry.

Once Stew arrived home, we went to Burger Fuel for dinner, then grabbed the beer for the concrete guys and came home.

Now... relaxing before bedtime.

Which won't be late cos yet again, my eyeballs are hanging out!

So, so tired.

But it was a good day, got all my jobs done and didn't fall into a heap by midday.

BLOODY HELL IT'S DARK OUT THERE!

 Well... we are up and it's the friggin middle of the night!

Waiting for the guys to arrive ... they have to set up the lights etc.

The concrete truck is due here at 5 am.

We are rather excited....

Catch ya later...

ABOVE:  4.45 am, all set up, just waiting for the truck now.

ABOVE:  And here she comes!  And I do mean 'she'.... the driver is a woman.  We can do anything.

ABOVE: And there it goes... the very first pour of concrete on the driveway!

There will be a total of 3 to 3 and a half trucks loads going on over the next few hours.

ABOVE:  And there it is!  The first pour.  Isn't it exciting?

ABOVE:  Amazing how much they have done already.  It's 6.40 am and the 2nd truck is about to leave.

6.50 am....

ABOVE:   Bye Darling, have a nice day at work.  

He got through the fence just fine. 😂😅😊

ABOVE:  And then it was our Miss Muppet's turn to go through the fence.  Off to school, see you in two weeks honey.  

ABOVE:  Now the finessing starts.  They are doing all the edges BEAUTIFULLY, and then doing finishing on the whole area.

I have no idea how the end result will look!

ABOVE:  The whirly gig thingee.... then the men got on their knees and smoothed it by hand!

ABOVE:  Almost done.

ABOVE:  Giovanni putting the final touch on...

ABOVE:  My metal thingee.   

Giovanni loved the idea, and now wants to get a stamp so he can leave his 'LOGO' on his work.

Bloody neat idea Gio.

ABOVE:  It's still drying, and we can't walk on it until at least tomorrow.   It will lighten up quite a bit too.

Which is excellent, it won't be too hot in summer to walk on.  It's not white, white concrete, which would have looked stark.

Right, better get out there and keep an eye out for anyone who MIGHT think of walking or riding their bike on it!

At least until I know all the school kids have gone home!

Brylee is keeping me company.  She even went and bought us some lunch.  Nice girl.

2.45 pm. Probably one more hour until I can go back inside. By then all the school kids will have gone by.

I can't wait until I can finally RELAX.  I've been awake since 3.45 am. I'm kinda tired 😫 😴 😪. 

A bonus of sitting on ya grass verge? People stop and yak. So nice. It reminds me of lockdown, when people stopped to talk about my tree.

I forgot to say... it took three full concrete truck loads to do our driveway.  That's a lot of concrete!

Steve stopped in on his way home from work to have a look at the driveway.  He is very impressed.  That's a relief... 😂😅😋, it's gotta pass the 'Steve Test'.

ONE SLEEP TO GO

 After 4 months of living with a terrible, botched driveway job, we are just one sleep away from finally getting the beautiful new driveway we wanted.

I'm just so damn excited!

Today Stew and I only have one small job to do, and that is to take a few boards off the front fence, so we can get in and out of our property while:  

a.  The concrete is going down, and

b.  while the concrete dries.

The driveway is the only way to access our house normally, hence the need to find another way in for a couple of days.

We know that we won't be able to walk on the concrete until at least Tuesday afternoon.

And no cars on it for at least a week.  That won't be a problem.

Daylight saving ended overnight, so we get to stay in bed an hour longer.  Love it!

Once we get up, it will just be a case of getting the fence 'access' sorted, then who knows?

The day is ours.

ABOVE: The day started with another nice, thick FOG.  Certainly Autumn now.

ABOVE:  And that didn't take long...

ABOVE:  We only needed to take off three boards. They will need to be replaced as they were rotten at the bottom.  

They've been there for probably 20+ years, so not surprising really.

ABOVE: And there it is, a little gap to come and go by for the next couple of days.

Now?  I'm thinking of suggesting Stew and I go for a drive somewhere.

ABOVE: Where are we ?

ABOVE: Lunch here. KATE...correct.

ABOVE:  Long way to go for lunch... but who cares. Heading home now.

4.18 pm:  And we are home after spending a few hours in Auckland.

Just had lunch at Garrison in Sylvia Park, wandered around the shops, checked out our old neighbourhood in The Gardens, then came home.

It was just a nice break away from home.  I will be stuck in the house for the next two days watching concrete go down, then keeping neighbour's cats off it till it dries.

It turned into a beautiful day after the fog cleared.

Very warm.  Hoping it's not this warm tomorrow!

Won't be that good for concrete laying if it's blistering hot.

So fingers crossed for a really cloudy day.

Dinner this evening?  Pork bites I think.

6.38 pm: Dinner is in the oven.  And I've just been a visited my immediate neighbours to let them know we will have the concrete company here at FOUR am tomorrow morning!

OMG that is gunna be an early start for us... not that we actually need to get up, but we will.

I want to try and get a video of the first pour!

It's times like this I miss my Mum so much!  I keep thinking "I must tell Mum", then remember she's gone.  

I used to tell her EVERYTHING.  Now I just have to take a deep breath and move on.

Right, enough of that, time to get dinner done.

Catch you TOMORROW!

DAY TWO OF PREP

The concrete guys worked till it was dark last night.

I think they wanted to get as much done yesterday as possible, so they didn't have to spend all day today getting all the prep work done.

ABOVE:  I think today 'all' they have to do is lay out the rest of the steel mesh.

They have done about a quarter of it so far.

So, hopefully they get that done and can enjoy at least half a day 'off' this afternoon.

They have been working 15 hour days this past week!

As for us?

We get to watch and feel lazy.

And that's all I have for now.

Catch ya later.

ABOVE:  10 am:  And...  Gio and his wife arrived nice and early and got the rest of the mesh down and linked together.  Such a hard working, lovely couple.

I've just had breakfast (hot cross buns), now we are debating what to do with our day.

I'd like to buy some plain white sneakers for winter, so we shall probably end up at The Base a bit later on.

ABOVE:  Success!   We found some sneakers for both of us, on sale at Smiths Sports Shoes. SCORE.

We didn't linger at The Base as I was feeling really tired, clearly not quite over the fatigue yet.

ABOVE:  We got home and the kids visited us.  We did end up buying the Letterbox Book, and it's been quite popular to flick through.

ABOVE:  Even our little kids are enjoying it.

We were surprised at how lovely the book is, and it's size.  

ABOVE: This kid just loves photo bombing! 

ANON:  Yes, that kid is Dante.  He's a right hard case kid.  God help us all once he's a teenager!

Dinner tonight, to feed a crowd, was macaroni cheese and sausages, followed by Magnum Ice Creams for dessert.

It was lovely to have our usual crowd here ... but they have all dispersed, and it's just Stew and I now.

An early night is on the cards as I'm tired.

I went to bed quite early last night too.  

This is down to 'covid fatigue' I'm sure.

It will be nice to feel 'normal' again.  I hope it's soon!

Catch ya tomorrow.

AND IT STARTS...

 First up, Griffin COOKING!

ABOVE:  He did well!  Now he has a lovely cake to take over to his girlfriend tonight!

That HE cooked.

Next week I'm going to walk him through cooking scones.

CONCRETE PREP DAY.  Today and tomorrow the guys will be working on our driveway.

I think today will mostly be ripping up the damn asphalt and getting rid of it.

I never want to say ASPHALT again after today.

They are due here fairly early, so I better not dither around in bed any longer.... time to get up and start the day.  WHOOP WHOOP!

Stew and I woke at 5 am.

And the guys didn't arrive until 8.30 am.  Long time just waiting, and waiting.

But they are here now, and they have started chipping away to the edges.

The digger arrives at 10 am.

ABOVE:  Some of the guys already here.

We have a fog today, so much cooler start to the day.

ABOVE:  11.30 am.  Progress has stalled.   The digger has not turned up.

BUGGER.

Not sure what's happening now.

ABOVE:  11.40 am, waiting for the digger.  It should be here in about 15 minutes.

ABOVE:  It's here!  And there it goes, it's first scoop recorded.

12.45 pm:  let's see how long this takes...

ABOVE: Two hours in with the digger, and about a third of the driveway is ripped up.

Originally they thought they would have it all prepped today, but with the delay with the digger arriving late, they will definitely be here tomorrow to do the rest of the prep work.

5.53 pm:  Well they are still going!

The last scoop of asphalt got dumped in the big black truck about half an hour ago.

They guys are now working on levelling the ground.

ABOVE:  I don't know how much longer they will work tonight?

Certainly will see them back tomorrow I think.  But let's see, they might keep going till it's ready for concrete on Monday!

Stew has cooked dinner tonight.  We are having lamb chops and veges.

ABOVE:  Those guys worked until almost 8 pm!  What awesome workers.

Some of the guys are coming back tomorrow to get the rest of the steel mesh down, so it's ready for Monday.

Now though, I'm absolutely knackered and am almost thinking about going to bed.