This Olde House - Part 7.5

The floor of the dining room is next. We were expecting to find a slab when we lifted up the old carpeting. Instead, we found bricks. Raw, untreated bricks. It only confirmed our suspicion that the dining room wasn't a part of the original house. Perhaps it used to be a porch or patio or something. And later they enclosed it. But they never covered it with anything other than a nappy rug. And they certainly didn't level it. The only reason I didn't put a wooden sub floor is because the area is far from level. I would have had to cut every board to a custom angle. And I mean EVERY board. So Cindy did some sweeping and I took the day off to supervise the efforts to get a solid, level floor in the dining room.


The cement truck arrived late. And instead of a front loader, it was a standard back loader. So the guy had to backup, onto my lawn, and angle a clean shot through the window. We were hoping to use a front loader and extend a couple of chutes through the window. But, as I've said, you gotta do what you gotta do. And the driver expertly damaged my yard while getting the chute in place.



It was rapidly apparent to me why I didn't want to tackle this project myself. Concrete isn't a forgiving or simple medium. The guy who worked it had a slow, mellow gait about him. He'd eyeball the pour and shout a couple of instructions to the driver. Surprisingly, the "driver" actually does a good bit of work throughout the adventure. He adds water to the mix, operates the chute, and does a good bit of cleaning. In addition to smoking endlessly and chatting it up with the guy smoothing the poured concrete.



After a while, they had the room filled and seemingly level. Then it was about an hour of smoothing. And an hour of cleaning. By the end, there was no apparent seam between the old floor (in the kitchen) and the new floor (in the dining room.) If nobody had ever seen it, they'd never know it wasn't part of the original house. And that is fine by me.

Next, on to the tiling...