Originally posted on 2020-11-08
Hey everyone! Really sorry I missed doing a post last week. It slipped my mind, but I will go back and write about getting the concrete truck in and getting the concrete poured. For now though I want to talk about all we had going on this week, or at least the last two days.
We needed to lay block over the weekend. One problem, we had no idea how to do that. Thankfully Will’s dad was a bricklayer for many years and he came over to teach us what to do and give us a hand. Will felt he was getting the hang of it, and truthfully he was, but then his dad would do a little bit and stress the difference years of experience makes, even if he hasn’t done it in a while. Still, he said he was impressed by how quickly Will picked it up.
We picked up some forks for the tractor to make moving the blocks and the bags of mortar around. They won’t pick up a full skid, so we still had to break them down, but it sure beats carrying each individual block around to the other side. Have I mentioned how useful the tractor has turned out to be? I have? Just checking. We also got a lot of use out of our cement mixer which I had previously thought wasn’t worth the money we spent on it. Though it’s true it’s not great for mixing up lots of concrete, since the mortar needed to be mixed one bag at a time it worked great. For most of the weekend, I used it to mix mortar while Will and his dad laid the blocks.
The trickiest part of laying block is getting the corners set up. They need to be squared and in the right location as that is what everything else is set off of. Saturday morning we had to tear down and redo the first corner after Will projected out the first row and discovered that we hadn’t quite placed the corner in the right spot. Once that was discovered we remeasured everything before starting again. That was a bit of a setback, but once we got moving it went fairly quickly.
By the time we called it a day on Saturday, shortly after sunset, we had the first wall completely done and three out of the four corners set. It was a long day, and we were sore at the end of it, but it was a good day. It’s been a while since we’ve been so noticeably productive and it felt great, even as we were exhausted. The same was true about the second day. I feel great, even if I feel like I could fall asleep while writing this.
As always this was a whole family affair and the little one was helpful getting tools and handling simple tasks given to her. We obviously didn’t have her doing the painful work of lifting cinder blocks or being on her feet all day, but she was helpful and enthusiastic. Also, we really couldn’t have asked for better weather for doing this, especially considering we are into November. For part of the time each day we were in only t-shirts and even at the coldest we were fine in sweaters. It was nice that the weather cooperated, especially since this project was behind from us being sick. We are clearly on the mend as the work had us both feeling good.
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Huron The Lake 