The driveway gets some concrete

I have posted a few times recently about the work we have had done on our drive, and the efforts of J Pluvius to continue to muck it up.  After discussions with our contractor and his colleague Steve, from Rocksolid Concreting, last Wednesday was the day for the concrete ford to be finished.

It had been a bit of a surprise the previous day to find the formwork had been laid ...
...  but with a little bit of mucking about both houses that use the drive organised our cars where we needed them.
When I took Tammie for her walk at 6:45 the ford was a hive of activity.
About 7:15 (right on time) there was a period of much beeping of the nature emitted by a reversing truck.  After a fair time to negotiate a narrow and bendy drive a very large cement truck appeared - sensibly backwards so it didn't have to wait until Sunday to depart once the cement had cured.
 Pouring happened.
When we walked out to go on our ANPS walk I wondered briefly if this was Carwoola on Wednesday or Lakemba on Friday.
Here is the finished job.  As our neighbour Di commented it is very attractive.  We'd all thought "concrete is concrete and thus ugly" - in my case a thought generated by the brutalised architecture of the Cameron Offices, in which I worked for 20 years.  However this looks really good with graceful curves.
We were able to walk on the concrete the next day and the kangaroos followed suit - without wiping their feet.
Steve had commented that a way of preventing future undercutting would be to plant grass against the edge of the new work.  So I wielded a spade in the grassy area upstream from the ford.
I reckon this is a spiffy bit of turf laying.
Just give me a purple Ford Zodiac and a couple of guys with gold teeth and I'll be right into the turf business!  Let us now hope we don't get a deluge for a few weeks.

Comments

Denis Wilson said…
Any Ford Zodiac would surely be in a Museum by now?
10 December 2013 at 09:17:00 GMT+11
Flabmeister said…
A good call Denis but I am reminded that when I was growing up in England (say the late 1960s) we developed a theory that GM still had a factory manufacturing 1940 Bedford trucks (complete with dented fenders and rusty doors when brand new) for sale to the diddicoys.

It is thus possible that in the bowels of Dagenham there is still an obscure production line making purple Zodiacs with bench seats for the turf dealing classes!
10 December 2013 at 10:12:00 GMT+11
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