Concrete Polishing

It was a glorious site to see the finished slab stripped of all its formwork. It looks quite thick but the depth is due to the Styrofoam waffle pods in the slab. For the first time we really got a chance to walk around the house and feel how the layout would work and watch as the sun shone through our, for now imaginary, windows. The room sizes felt fine and I was pleased with how well Ken's earlier suggestion to tilt the front pavilion worked.

The finished concrete slab

The concrete polishers, Henry and Adrian from the Dayman Group, arrived with their grinding machine to take off the top layer of the concrete to expose a little of the aggregate. The machine was not as loud or aggressive as I had thought and it operated wet so there was no dust. Instead there was a sloppy muddy slurry that was squeegeed off the edge, so that the machine operator could see how much they were grinding. It was slow methodical work.

Adrian and Henry grinding the slab

When Adrian and Henry first started they did under the kitchen cupboards and we had to look to confirm the level of grind we wanted. The look we chose was a little more than just the fines showing with only a little of the aggregate showing. After the front pavilion was done we did another check just to confirm the look we wanted.

In Nowra we only has the choice of river stone or blue metal aggregate. We definitely did not want the blue metal look, so the river stone was our only choice. We are happy with the river stone's random colours from whites, to tan, to olive, and this looks great with the darker grey oxide we put in the concrete.

Concrete is tricky to photograph

This afternoon after confirming some drainage locations with our plumber, we left Henry and Adrian to finish the grinding. Once finished the concrete polishers will put a temporary coating on the slab, before returning after the walls are done for the final grind and seal. We headed up to Truss-T-Frame Timbers to finalise the frame order and discuss a few of the unusual details of the design. We got there 5 minutes before they closed (oops) and David kindly stayed back to discuss the frame with me.

Ideally we would have ordered the frame two or three weeks ago, so it was ready to go up once the concrete polishers were finished, but time has been taken trying to finalise the awning detail, and it is time well taken as changes to the awning affected the stud spacing. Thankfully the frame will only take a couple of weeks, and this will give me time to organise someone to put it up.