The first footing for our "pole barn" is finally done and nobody got hurt!

Ok, I passed the hurtle of doing something without knowing really how to do it!!!!

Sometimes It's just wierd, I seem to have a lack of confidence in building or working with a material I've never worked with. I think I may be afraid to do it wrong or maybe even that it wouldn't have been done perfectly... I don't really know!

The person I work for the most is someone I respect very much... He's even become something of a mentor to me in the world that I work in. We are rigging grips in the film industry and there is quite a lot of improvisation when we need to build something for a shot. We customize temporary structures almost all the time. Sometimes it may be a plywood box painted black we had to hang on the side of a buikding, up on the second or third floor, over a window with enough room and strength to hold a couple lights to make it look like it was night time... sometimes it's an access ramp for the crew and their equipment, that goes over staires or bushes.

Eitherway everything has to be done with what we have on the truck and it has to be safe... there are a lot of people running around, in a rush, not paying too much attention to their surroundings.

What I'm getting at is what he used to say to me that I sometimes forget about:

Perfectionists never finish anything.

And in the end, I shouldn't be afraid of figuring things out... I DO IT ALL THE TIME!

Ready-mix concrete is nothing to be afraid of::

But first, the holes need to be prepared.

I finished prepping my holes after the building inspector gave me the go ahead to continue working. I vacuumed most of the dirt out of it, stuck a rebar in the bottom as the inspector had asked to have a photo sent to him like that.

Then, I made a few of these triple T-bars (not the official name) with wire::

To make them I used a grinder with a cutting wheel. I cut about a dozen 6 inch pieces and six 2 foot pieces to start with. I will be making 10 of them in the end, one for each hole.

Than, I placed them in the hole thay was drilled into the bedrock about 8 inches in. I also decided to buy sonotubes for the forms, instead of making them. It was well worth the money and time, especially after they're cut them in half!

Once the holes are ready (well I really just did one, I started with a few but than dirt fell back in before I was ready to go on with those), I placed the form in the hole with a couple braces making sure the top of the tube was where I wanted it and plumb.

Now the concrete (what I was scared of)

As the instructions on the bag decribed to do:

I found the best way to mix the concrete was to do it with a hoe:

Looking at it now, that was really easy... I went back to that black bracket to check the level every couple hours until it was dry enough that it would stay nice.

And there it is, we could o ly do that one post for now as we are now in Europe, traveling abouts...

I hope you enjoyed the post and remember... things aren't always as scary as they may seem! Just get out there and start doing it.