08 January, 2012

Is This Camelot?

By Geroge, it sure is beginning to look like it, what with the brand new round table and all. It was a small project, but one of those that took pretty much all day. The table ended up being four-foot diameter and about four inches thick - pretty good sized, but still in keeping with the size of the palapa.
Carlos Smoothing Poured Concrete
 Carlos spent most of the morning prepping the form - wood bottom surface and Celotex (same thing as Masonite) for the roundy part of the form. It really looks nice.
Kane Almost Done With The Pour
 Kane, the go-to guy for working thatch in the palapa also is young enough to hump the 100-pound 5-gallon buckets of concrete, of which it took several to complete the pour.
Carlos Getting It All Even
 Carlos worked in between each bucket-full to ensure the table top became level and that it was a consistent thickness.
We Had A Good-Sized Peanut Gallery
 As luck would have it, the table pour occurred on a Friday, which meant that we had a pretty good Happy Hour crowd to play the role of supervisors for the pour.
Carlos Floating the Finish
Finally, here's Carlos putting the finishing touches on the table before knocking off for the day. I have to confess, with as smooth as it was after Carlos got done with it and left, I came out later and noticed a bug stuck in the concrete. Naturally, I grabbed a piece of paper and gently tried to remove it so there would be no permanent reminder on the table. Well, guess what? I managed to leave a few scratches in the tabletop, even though I was trying to be extremely careful. We had talked about possibly tiling the top, so it now looks as though that is just what we're going to have to do - thanks to my skills at bug removal.

Still, it's a mighty grand looking table. I can't wait to have a party around it. It'll be fun - scratches and all.


JRinSC said...

Tell you what, Dave. It looks like you are going to be just about out of areas in the yard for new projects shortly. Therefore, in order for you not to run any further to seed than you have already, I've come up with a several project ideas that might help keep you out of trouble.

1 - Buy a boat

2 - Buy an old boat and rebuild it

3 - Purchase the lot next door so you can have room to start more yard improvements.

or 4 - Erase this comment and go about your own business.

Dave Rider said...

Hi Julian,

I like numbers 1, 2, and 3. That's why I play Lotto now and then. I play somewhat irregularly. That way I keep the gods of chance either on their toes or perhaps napping and hopefully, improving my chances.

There's really no shortage of projects. If it's not something new, it's something already built that is going to break; is breaking; or has already broken. If that hasn't happened yet, it was probably assembled wrong or uses parts that are not obtainable anymore, or the whole process has been superseded by something technologically more complex, expensive and confusing for the end user. In short, never a dull moment.
But, keep those ideas coming. One of them will work.