2 Days of Shovelling!

Having finished most of the big jobs in the house, we are now starting to turn the garage into a utility room. The first thing we needed was a floor. We needed to raise the level up by about 5 inches as we need it to be the same level as the house for when we knock the door through from the house. So, we started to make good use of the sand & gravel dropped off to us last week.

Tuesday saw us shovelling this mix by the wheel barrow load for 4 hours. Trust me, that’s a lot of shovelling and is very hard work. By early afternoon we were both covered in dust, as I tried to knock the dust of Neil it came up in great clouds, I felt like the character ‘Pigpen’ from the cartoon ‘Peanuts’ but I needed to get as much off as possible before going into the house as I really didn’t have the energy to start cleaning the house as well.

Surprisingly, we didn’t feel as ache-y the next morning as I thought we would, we’re obviously getting used to this ‘work’ thing.

So, Wednesday was set aside for a day of concreting. The base was laid, the shuttering was in place and we had decided to try and do the whole floor in one day so that there weren’t any joins – whether that would turn out to be a good idea, we would know that evening.

Neil mixed the first load of concrete and I realised that there was very little for me to do while laying the concrete and my day looked to be a serious of tea-making, dog-walking and standing around keeping Neil company.

The first load went down very quickly and hardly seemed to make an impact on the area we had to do. It would be a slow process if Neil had to stop to mix the concrete and then go back to lay it so I asked him to show me how to do the mixing.

It’s not rocket science – but involved shovelling 18 large shovels of sand & grit into the mixer along with the cement powder and a bucket and a half of water to each mix. I felt I could at least do some of this to help ease Neil’s workload and to give him some continuity while laying the concrete –and, it would mean we got the job done quicker.

So, I started shovelling. …..

…… and shovelling…….

…………..and shovelling.

My thought was that I would do as much as I could before my back began to give me problems – and that was the strange thing – it didn’t. Now, if I sit at my desk on the computer for more than an hour I am in serious pain but this – well, my back just wasn’t complaining.

The weather was warm, the hours passed quickly, we drank copious amounts of water – and we finished after about 6 hours, by which time I could hardly raise the shovel high enough to get the gravel in the mixer and Neil could hardly push the wheel barrow full of cement up the ramp to fill in the last remaining square of floor. We were both truly knackered but it was done, time for a sandwich and a laze in the hot tub – trust me, never has the hot tub seemed so wonderful.

As the evening progressed we both started to seize up. I couldn’t grip with my hands, I couldn’t raise my arms above shoulder height and I could hardly walk. Tomorrow wasn’t looking good so I designated it as a rest day – before we went to bed. I wasn’t getting up before my body said it wanted to get up and I wasn’t doing anything that involved holding more than a coffee cup. Neil wasn’t much better and certainly didn’t object.

The morning came and I knew, even before putting a foot to the floor, that there was no way I could do anything more than hobble. I forget that the arthritis has spread to my feet and that if I am on my feet for more than about 3 hours they suffer – 6 hours meant serious suffering. My fingers refused to bend and lifting my arms up to wash my hair in the shower took some real effort. But, my back? Well, surprisingly unaffected – how bizarre!

Maybe pushing to do it all in a day was a push too far but when we went out to take a look it was incredibly satisfying and we knew that was the biggest, single job done. We counted up how many loads of cement it had taken – 20. That’s 360 shovel fulls of sand & grit, 30 buckets of water and 5 bags of cement – that’s some serious work – and it really felt good.