Construction Blogging: Not Your Mama's Concrete

Things have been pretty slow-moving, and pretty dang frustrating, on the house lately.  In my last blog, I mentioned that we couldn't get started on the inside of the house due to the roof not being finished and due to a few missing doors/windows.  Well, we got the custom windows for the vaulted area in the living room, but TWO OF THEM WERE MADE WRONG.  You can kind of see the framed openings in the picture below (ignore the crooked chimney, which has since been replaced):

The window company sent their own representative to our house to measure the holes.  Ben was there when he came and literally watched the guy measure the holes 10 different times and make drawings of the windows.  Somehow between his drawings and production, however, the manufacturer decided that we didn't really want those two triangle-esque windows on the bottom left and right to come to a point on the outside and that we probably meant for them to have a little flat spot on that side like they do on the top.  And of course it took us fifty-leven weeks to get those windows, and it will probably take another fifty-leven to get replacements, so they had the nerve to ask, "Well, can you make them work?"  REALLY?  Yes, we'll just go ahead and raise that roof on up eight inches to make your little flat-spotted windows work.  Go home, window company; you're drunk.   

So, we still don't have those two windows.  But we had a plan to just board them up and move on with insulation as soon as we could get the roof finished.  It took forever for the roofers to get back to work on our house, and when they finally came back, they worked for one day, didn't finish, and said they ran out of metal and weren't able to get another load due to the ice storm in Texas (I swear, if I hear "Covid" or "ice storm" one more time as an excuse for a delay...).  They had told Luis, our project manager, that they were going to finish that day, though, so he had lined up the insulation crew for the next day.  Instead of calling them off, he put plastic on the part of the roof that wasn't finished and had them go ahead and install the insulation.  

The roofers came back two days later, on a Saturday.  Ben and I happened to be at the house that morning, and they told us they were going to finish that day (as it turns out, they say that a lot).  I really hoped they did, because that was the weekend that we were expecting 20 million inches of rain.  Well, apparently the rain started before they finished the roof; they had obviously pulled Luis's plastic off the roof so they could work on it; and THEY LEFT WITHOUT PUTTING THE PLASTIC BACK ON.  So a crapton of the newly-installed insulation got wet (which is why we had said all along that we didn't want insulation installed before the roof was finished).  

To make matters worse, the day the insulation was being installed, our builder called to schedule an insulation inspection and was told that the first available date was eight days later.  So, basically, we'd be stuck for eight days not able to move any further on the inside of the house.  Not happy about that, but what can you do?  Well, you'd think you would have plenty of time to plan for your next move, but you might be wrong.  On the day that our inspection was scheduled, there was still wet insulation hanging in the breakfast nook area because they hadn't yet taken it down and replaced it with dry insulation.  IN EIGHT DAYS!!  Hell, even the roof got finished in those eight days!  

Ta-daaaaaaa!  The back porch roof was the last part to be finished.  I had to document the occasion.  Never mind the missing corner windows in the vault.  But that's a fine-looking chimney!

Also, we had been told that drywall had been ordered and the drywall installers would be there the day after the insulation inspection.  Well, no drywall appeared (damn Covid ice in Texas, apparently); hence, no drywall workers appeared.  I was fit to be tied after being told a million times that something was going to happen/get done "today" or on a certain date and being utterly disappointed that it never happens.  Maybe in an effort to keep from sending me over the edge, our builder called and told me the concrete company was coming to pour our porches the next day.

I was dubious because I have now conditioned myself never to believe that anything will happen on the day that it's supposed to happen, but I also couldn't help but be excited.  I decided I didn't want our porches to be plain concrete, so several weeks ago I started looking at different staining/stamping options for something interesting that would look good with the style of our house.  I saw a bunch of pics on The Google of concrete that was stamped and stained to look like wood, and I thought it would be really cool to have a wood-looking porch (without the maintenance of wood) on this house, which we've intentionally made a little more farmhouse-y than the last one.  But it looked like a pretty involved process that could very easily be screwed up by someone who isn't really good at the decorative concrete game.  Plus, I was concerned as to what color we would pick for the concrete so that it would match (or at least blend well with) the color of our wood floors in the house (which will also match our front door, the tongue-and-groove porch ceilings, the posts on the front and back porches, etc.).  I knew that if it didn't turn out exactly right, we could end up with some really ugly concrete and either have to just live with it or pay a bajillion dollars to tear it up and replace it (because concrete ain't cheap, let alone decorative concrete).

Our builder introduced us to Cary Anderson with Anderson Poured Walls in Morristown.  We went to their office and talked to him, and he showed us their wood-look stamping forms and some pictures of work they've done (not specifically wood-look work, but other work).  He was super nice and very informative.  Their business started out as just poured walls, but then they hired a flatwork company to do a concrete floor in their building.  That company completely screwed it up, so they decided they were going to learn to fix it and then get into the flatwork business.  And I'm very glad they did, and also glad I convinced myself to take a chance on this concrete.  

I watched the whole process come together over a few days, and at times I wondered whether I made a mistake.

The initial pour.  Okay, color looks good, but the final color will be a little different due to the "antiquing" stuff they put on it to make it look more like wood, so I'm still concerned about whether I picked the right color to match all the other stuff.

The back porch after the stamping.  It's looking a little...gray.

The front porch after the stamping

This is when they were pressure washing the gray stuff off and putting on the antiquing stuff.

And finally, after the antiquing stuff dried, they sealed it, and HERE IS THE FINISHED PRODUCT:

That's my flooring sample in the middle.  HOLY COW!

The flooring sample kind of looks like a dent in the porch on this one.  A very well-matched dent in the porch!!

I am so thrilled with the way these porches turned out.  I can't say that the awesome concrete made up for all the frustration of the past few weeks, but it did bring me back to a better frame of mind.  AND, we finally got some drywall, and the drywall dudes got a ton of it on the walls today!

I have NO idea how they walk around on these stilts things.

I can't say we're really "back on track" (I don't even know where the track is at this point), but we're at least moving forward, and for that I'm thankful.