Week 39 - Stamped concrete

Some more fitting happened inside this week - some of the air-conditioning vents were installed, along with our doorbell intercom. We had originally wanted just a plain old ding-dong doorbell, but we could only find ugly surface mounted plastic ones, so we ended up buying a video intercom online fairly inexpensively and it does the trick.

Back outside and our fence posts were installed. They are huge - we didn't really notice but they were marked down as 150mm posts, and when they arrived we were a bit surprised. They look nice and solid though, so we're not complaining. They got the same notch and taper top that other timber posts in our house have to add some architectural interest.

I gave a design to the carpenter for the rafter tails that we added underneath the bay window, and also around the carport beam. These will be painted white to blend in, and I think add a layer of authenticity to the carport. The idea is to make it look like it was built with the house in the 1930s. I hadn't anticipated that the beam around the carport would be so tall, so I adapted on the fly and had the fascia board painted to match the guttering  to reduce the beam visually - I think it turned out pretty well. The decorative end design of these timber blocks we took from a 1930s planter box that was on the front of the house. 

On Saturday some of the concrete was poured and stamped. It turns out that stamped concrete is really a dying art, and we were not able to find someone to do the deep impression stamps that my parents had done 18 years ago. Apparently everyone wants exposed aggregate - which looks lovely for 2 years but because of the surface texture, it gets really dirty with road grime. It's also sharp underfoot, which we don't like. The next best thing is a rubber stamped pattern which leaves a shallower pattern in the surface of the concrete. It's such a shame - the deep stamped concrete is so durable - it has endless grip for car tyres and shoes and we tinted the concrete mix, so that darker grey colour can never wear off. We are still happy with how the rubber stamping turned out - it's much more durable than a spray-coat pattern and is more interesting and forgiving than plain concrete or exposed aggregate.

They need to come back and finish off the driveway to the street - it's going to be a lot of concrete surface are, so we will really need to soften it with lots of plants around the edges.