Feeling Buff — Mesa Buff – Lilypad Perspectives

After three weeks of waiting for Mother Nature to cooperate (see photo above of untimely February snowfall), we finally poured our concrete slab today! As I fell asleep last night to a light drizzle on the trailer roof and awoke to puffy coat temperatures, I would argue Mother Nature wasn’t quite ready to oblige… but we did it anyway! I’m not trying to slam Mother Nature here. We knew what we were getting into when we chose the middle of winter to start building a house in the PNW – we only have ourselves to blame. But Mother Nature pulled through for us today. The sun actually came out a couple times and most miraculously, there was no rain. Queue: Blind Melon | No Rain

The “A Team” showed up this morning to assist with the pour – two friends of Tache’s who are full-time contractors with lots of concrete experience and our neighbor friend who always seems to have random construction projects in the works. Pumper Paul showed up to do what he does – pump – the concrete into the slab and last, but not least, the two concrete trucks pulled in, churning our Mesa Buff color-choice into the concrete mix as they arrived. We made an extra pot of coffee for the crew. Tache bought white chocolate/macadamia nut breakfast cookies and everyone was feeling the caffeine and sugar rush. The energy was high!

The concrete truck emptied into the hopper of Pumper Paul’s pump and Pumper Paul positioned his pump hose into our future kitchen. The first truckload filled our kitchen, living room, and dining room floor space. The second truckload filled the guest bedroom, bathroom, mudroom, and floor space under the stairs.

How much concrete did we need exactly? Just do the math: 36×30 foot house, minus the sunken shower pan, plus the entryway… oh but it’s cubic, so multiply by the 4 inches of depth… add the hot water, subtract the air temperature, find the average number of beers consumed, carry the one… convert feet to yards and there you have it! It’s that simple! But really, Tache calculated 15 yards of concrete and we used almost every bit of it. Pretty impressive!

“All I can say is that my life is pretty plain. I like watching the puddles gather rain.” While humming No Rain, I realized our Mesa Buff floors are the exact same color as the mud puddle formed during last night’s drizzle. But hey, we like it. Very earthy… so yea, our future floors are mud puddle-esque.

After all the concrete was poured, the tedious task of babysitting began. Luckily one of our A Team members is a pro concrete-sitter. He handles a bull float like the best of them, effortlessly reaching the middle of the floor from 12 feet away. He then ran the power trowel multiple times across the Mesa Buff, smoothing it out more and more each time. The last run was well past sunset, luckily Tache was there to hold the flood light (and his beer).

Our neighbors down the hill walked up to celebrate the long-awaited Mesa Buff pour. Immediately upon arrival, Tim threw the Aerobie — landing it right in the middle of the slab. Moxie dove for it, leaving cute little paw prints across the floor (a sign of my future house cleaning duties?). Luckily we were able to buff it out, but we did leave one little paw print in the corner. Under a brilliant Waxing Gibbous moon, we toasted to the Mesa Buff floors of our future house!

Two Side notes:

Around 3:30, Tache received a phone call about a 56 foot yacht that had run aground right outside the marina. He was hesitant to take the job due to the concrete babysitting schedule. After some hemming and hawing (and possibly a few final swigs), he decided to leave the babysitting to the A Team and went to rescue the boat. He was back in an hour, with money in his pocket to pay for our Mesa Buff slab. HECK YEAH!

To keep the A Team in high spirits, I ran to town to pick up sandwiches and the aforementioned beers. On the way home, a fawn jumped right in front of my new car. I slammed the breaks and put my arm across the passenger seat — much like the Assman’s stop short move — to stop Moxie from flying through the windshield. I saved her life, but pulled a muscle or tendon in my shoulder. I’ll have to take it easy for a few weeks, but hopefully I’ll be back in the pool soon!