6.10.2015

A little updating is in order.  As I said before, since concrete kept getting postponed, Jim felt like it was a message for him to look over his scaffolding and shoring yet again.  So he decided to beef up some of the cold-formed steel supports he had put on the insides of the scaffolding towers.  Instead of just one piece of steel like he had before, he made this hefty box support.  He used the steel studs we have for walls so he didn't have to buy anything - they're just temporarily being repurposed!

But this has been a lot of work.  There is so much shoring that it's hard to get 10' tall pieces of steel wrangled into place inside the scaffolding towers!  Plus he weighs about 50 pounds.  Then there are so many places he's screwing them into the stringers.  He also put more horizontal steel connections midway.  So this has been days of work.



We also had a brief afternoon thunderstorm on Tuesday.  You can see that all of our grading and trench area kind of turned into a raging river for awhile.  Ugh.

All the fine silt and top soil washes away, leaving rocks behind and depositing the silt downstream - look how it covered up the hose!

 

Yesterday morning, Jim also went down to Albany to pick up a different kind of concrete sealer.  It was better quality and price than he had found before.  Then he took the other kind back to the concrete place locally and investigated their mortar coloring.  More decisions...

The worst part of the day was a phone call between Jim and the concrete contractor.  We were all set for tomorrow and the forecast looks perfect.  However, the contractor said he had looked at the weather on Tuesday and it looked questionable.  So, unlike the other times when he has called Jim and they made the decision together, he just canceled it for Thursday - and didn't even let Jim know.  Jim thinks that we must have gotten pushed back on his schedule and he's not happy about it.  For now, the guy is supposed to look at the weather for next week and call Jim.  Very frustrating.

However, life at the carriage house must go on.  Jim spent the morning continuing shoring work.  After lunch, we made a trip to the recycling center which is so conveniently located practically around the corner from us.  They take all kinds of scrap metal for free - we had probably four 5-gallon pails and other miscellaneous steel and wire to get rid of, so it was good to clean up some of that.

Then it was back to block work.  First, more brick ties on the back...

...and on the side.

Time to make the donuts!....or the mortar, I mean.

As before, my job is to bring Jim shovelfuls of mortar, keep the mortar mixed up, and bring him the block so that he can just place it.

Working in the back...

 

Wow - the back area is all done with block.  All the rest of this area will be brick.  Looks SO good!  Just the way it was drawn up on the plans!

Finishing the last bit of mortar up on the blocks at the side.  This is almost done too!

 

High 79/Low 54