Bit of old news, but it was a.. landmark :P David’s Christening was a couple weeks ago, and before that Stephanie and I decided that it was high time we do something about the grills – when we bought them right as we moved in, we put them in the back yard and planned on doing something more permanent later. Well, it’s been two years, I guess that’s later. After getting a quote for a nice deck that we wanted to do, and realizing it was around double what we wanted to spend at the time, I priced things out for pouring a concrete pad to sit them on (originally I thought about doing pavers, but that would’ve been as much or more work when you consider leveling the ground and all, plus you can still get weeds growing up through them). This was all decided on a Friday night, mind you, and we started the work on Saturday :> Went and got all the materials, and Leigh and I started digging. By the end of the night, the basics were done, and on Sunday he and my father did the post hole and trench for the electrical (I put a pressure treated post by the pad, with an outlet and light on it for nighttime grilling and use of the rotisserie without an extension cord). Jim showed up later on, and we finished the form, backfilled and leveled, and then waited for the rain to pass. After it did, and the ground dried up enough, we mixed 18 bags of concrete to pour a 10’x3’x4″ pad – hampered by the failure of the cement mixer part way through, and having to mix the rest by hand in the wheelbarrow that I’m glad I bought on Saturday. By about 9pm I was edging, grooving and surfacing the pad, and while it would’ve looked better if I finished in the light (so I could see where I dug a little too much while surfacing it), I still say it looks damned good for someone who’s never lifted a bag of concrete in their life. So did all of the people who saw it the following weekend :>