Building A Cottage

- Week 2 -

The form building continued in preparation for the concrete. It was delicate work as the footings had all been carefully leveled and couldn't be jostled. Ha! After all the painstaking labor they got major jostling when the concrete arrived.

The concrete came out of the truck and into a hopper which shot it into a hose which became very heavy as it filled with wet concrete. This then was lugged over the form walls.

Fortunately Herb's son, Chris, had arrived to help out for a few days. The extra pair of hands helped hold the hose, scrape the trowels, build the scaffolding, vibrate the air pockets out of the concrete, place the anchor bolts, and add moral support.

It was a hot day so Elaine (Herb's wife) and I were busy bringing water to all the workers. How helpful this was is questionable as it distracted one of the men--who let go of the hose which suddenly spun out of the hands of the remaining worker and sprayed wet concrete everywhere!

A greater concern was the stability

of the walls. When a wall began to bulge the men raced to brace it for fear it would break.

Although the inspector declared our forms to be 5 cm too short Harry and Herb came up with a brilliant solution--add two 'plates' made of 2x4's on top of the finished concrete wall before laying down the floors.

The next day Harry and I worked alone stripping the forms.

In spite of the multitude of nails sticking out of every piece of wood that got stripped, we evaded injury and proudly surveyed our lovely concrete foundation.

The analogy of our spiritual foundation in Jesus Christ that also required the use of nails and wood did not escape my contemplation.

Thank you, Jesus, for dying on the cross for us.

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We waved goodbye to the Manning Park bear as we headed back home.