Base Construction

Buying the Blocks, Cement and Tools:  As you can see from Picture 1, I am lucky with a concrete patio floor.  But back to shopping.  Purchased the following:

1. Blocks.  Full and Half
2. Trowel
3. Chalk line
4. Cement
5. Mixing tub

Purchased the above items at the local HomeDepot and since the blocks quite heavy and I did not want to break the suspension of my roommates car (my car is a toy), decided to rent a pickup truck from HomeDepot.  Not a bad deal: about $20 for the first 75 minutes.

Laying the Blocks:  Having never laid bricks, I wasn't sure how complicated this would be.  Turned out to be quite simple except, I highly recommend wearing work gloves as the blocks are very rough to touch and handling time for few hours can be damaging to the hands.  I did learn that the hard way.

I choose not to put rebar and concrete in the blocks for additional strength.  Not sure why, but with my engineering background I felt that it would be an over kill.  I could however be proven wrong in the future.

Picture 2

Day 1 of construction ended with the base complete and area cleaned up.

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