I Call It a Wall

It absolutely poured last night -- we got inches of rain. For those of you who are not accustomed to California weather, this is rather like a blizzard dropping a foot of snow on Chicago in July. The rain let up around midday and I went out and began prying board off the wall.

It took us a while to figure out the best way to take the forms off, but it basically involved taking off all the little bits until we just had the plywood to pry off.

Then we used the flat side of the pry bar to pull the plywood away from the concrete. All that rain had swelled the form wood which made getting it apart more difficult, but we persevered.

Here you can see how the sprayed-in foam at the bottom of the forms kept the concrete from blooping out at the bottom too much. It wasn't perfect, but it did the job.

You can kind of see the extent of the leaking in this photo. The other thing you can see are the form ties, waiting to be bent off. You just bend them back and forth and they break off due to metal fatigue.

We finished off the small side first, which was very encouraging. It only rained on us a small bit, very polite for a weather system.

At the end of the day we had a nice big pile of stripped-off form wood....

And the plywood.

Oh, yeah, and a wall. I'm pretty happy with it. The finish is not all I would like, but the reality is that the wall will be hidden behind plants from in front and under plants hanging down from above.

posted by ayse on 06/04/11