Forming Concrete

Yesterday, in preparation for the start of a big remodeling project, my wife and I began to create the new tops for the posts on our front porch. During construction, the existing tops, which measure 30 x 30 x 4 and are concrete, will be destroyed so we can reinforce the brick pillars that hold up the front porch roof. Consequently we need new caps for the posts. Yesterday I built three molds (one for each post). Because they were large and would hold a lot of concrete, I built them from 3/4-inch plywood that was glued and nailed together. I also routed out some cove molding and cut it into the corners at the bottom of each box (so that the concrete would have a nice rounded edge when it came out of the mold). Today, we mixed fiber concrete for the first cap as a test. Two hundred forty pounds of concrete. It's curing downstairs now. Tomorrow we'll probably pull the test cap out of the form. More notes on that later.