Slurry applied, worry denied!

Hello Blogfans! I must confess, I was worried. I'd bought seven bags of very expensive latex floor leveling compound to lay on the rough concrete to make it worthy of the beautiful bamboo floor which should arrive on Friday. I read the instructions, scratched my chin, read them again. Worry gave way to fear. All sorts of stuff about smoothing with a trowel, doing things IMMEDIATELY, maximum 20 minutes working time at 10 degrees... Zoiks, scraping up £16 worth of compound and binning it due to incompetence with a trowel or slowness with the mixing bucket, not a comfortable thought. Phone Richard! That's what to do. Some time later, I felt much more confident, and yesterday morning, Rich came over for a cup of coffee and to further brief me on the behavior of the grey gloop. So after lunch, I was ready to go.

The floor was clean, free of dust, sealed with PVA and dry. Trowel at the ready.

Tools ready too. A mixing bucket, a drill with a mixing bit, a
spare fully charged battery on stand-by.

Mixing half a bag at a time, I started. So far, so good...

There's never anyone around to take pictures of me when I'm in action, all glistening with perspiration, bulging muscles, but this is the best I could do myself. The adrenalin and afore mentioned perspiration were pumping at this point. The temperature was more like 20 degrees and working time was about 10 minutes. As soon as one lot was spread out with the trowel, i was back mixing the next at top speed. I'd watched Richard mixing plaster and copied his technique: Bag of powder between the knees, drill in one hand mixing the slop and rapid pelvic thrusts shaking the powder from the 25KG bag into the bucket. That'll get anyone sweating.

Finally, I made my exit via the patio doors and did the last bit from outside. I had it planned this way so as not to leave myself stranded on a little concrete island somewhere in the middle of the floor surrounded by an ocean of wet slop. Clever eh?