Browsing the blog archives for
February, 2007.
Snow day! It snowed on and off all day today, greatly hindering our brick-laying progress. We were nervous that moisture would find its way to the adobe bricks and dissolve them into dust. Oh no! So far, we’re safe. We were able to make a bit of headway on one of the adobe walls, as well as pour the curved stem wall. While some of us worked on the home, another group of us visited the three former DesignBuildBluff homes for ideas about detailing our own home. Beautiful homes they are! As this group traveled home, though, the other group battled snow until they finally decided to pack up a bit early and head for home.
The traveling group finds its way onto the Caroline house rooftop.
dbBdb: Mitch and Dawn laid down a feast fit for a Mexican king! They prepared fabulous bean, rice, cheese, green chile, and guacamole burritos, with a red cabbage salad, all finished with scrumptious brownies for dessert. Ole!
A blustery day indeed! (As I write this, I’m still trying to get dirt and sand out of my hair and nose and ears.) We battled intense dust storms today as we laid the first courses of our adobe walls and built more stem wall form work. Several of the guys set up the CMU blocks for the first course of the adobe walls. Lindsay, Ryan, and Atsushi did a great job setting up the form work for the curved stem wall. Excitement! Monica and I (Camille) tried our hands at masonry, laying the first adobe bricks. What a time-consuming business! Why did we decide to go with adobe bricks again?
Throwing concrete in the CMU blocks.
Eric’s calendar pose #3.
Animated group discussion.
Nice slice, Kaitlin. Check out that upper body strength!
We have temporary power! 3 kilowatt hours’ worth! Use it wisely.
Look at those level bricks!
Beautiful poles.
Atsushi, fresh from his swim meet. I think we’ve got some gold medal material here.
I’ve never seen better looking curved form work!
Ryan, all smiles.
Nice back, C.B. (He’s into tanning his lower back. Thinks it’s what gets the ladies.)
Stem wall action.
Camille and Monica make sure the bricks are level. We’ll be trying out for the “Little Miss Mason Pageant” soon.
The alien landscape of Dora and Baxter’s house.
Ford: our newest sponsor.
dbBdb: Dinner left us all speechless. This masterpiece, designed by Kaitlin, featured handmade spanakopita (a traditional Mediterranean spinach and feta cheese pie), a delicious salad with a feta cheese and lemon juice dressing, and pita chips with hummus and kalamata olives. Magnificent! This feast was followed by some of Camille’s yummy chocolate and white chocolate chip cookies for dessert.
After our standard Monday morning meeting, we headed to the site for non-brick stacking work. Thank goodness!! Groups of us hauled sand and gravel, poured the concrete for the stem wall and shower areas, and began laying the CMU blocks on which to lay the adobe bricks. Only 9 weeks left until we have (hopefully) a finished house! Pressure’s on!
Shirtless wonder Atsushi.
Ryan’s tender care.
Topless Talvy. (Needs to work that beer gut.)
Taking care of business.
Dumping a load.
Mixing concrete is fun!
The stem wall connoisseurs.
Our newest friend, Dwight! He was so helpful with loading up our truck with gravel today! Thanks Dwight!
Shovel faster!
The divas of dirt.
Empty bags of cement. (This shows how much we worked today!)
Our first wall, in its baby form!
dbBdb: Matt and Ryan whipped up a batch of their famous fajitas! What a spread! We dined on flour tortillas filled with beef, peppers, onions, jalapenos, rice, and delicious refried beans, accompanied by chips and salsa. Mouthwatering Mexican fiesta!
Instead of attending to our usual restful/adventurous Sunday activities, we submitted to the slave driver of the brick-making machine. This weekend was the only chance we had to work with Antonio, the brick master, so we forfeited our Sunday retirement for some insanely repetitive and strenuous lifting. Each of us personally handled at least 72 tons of bricks today. Believe me, it gets pretty boring standing in the assembly line, lifting the same thing for hours on end. All of us used our creative powers to enliven the job, creating dances, making jokes, writing messages on the bricks as they were passed down the rollers, and doing a number of other things to while away the tedious time. Some of us questioned whether or not we should be in studio right now cranking out some stressful, mentally taxing project that’s due tomorrow. Bricks, studio, bricks, studio . . . it’s a tough decision.
Hank handled the dinner for tonight. We trekked out to Mexican Hat and dined at the San Juan Inn and Trading Post. We were pretty much the only folks at the little cafe there. We ate some good, hearty food and made it back in time to watch the Oscars at Hank’s house! Good times!
Ryan took the contractor’s place and vented his anger on Lindsay. He raised his voice and dropped some obscene words that can’t be repeated and pointed his fingers a lot about maybe the stem wall form work or the concrete mixture or something like that, but no one really knows. I won’t tell you how this little meeting ended, but take a good look at Lindsay’s tightly clenched fist.
Human conveyor belt. The group in its most bored state.
Block party! With the help of Antonio, our resident pressed block expert, our group handled over 72 tons of pressed block bricks today! That’s right, 72 tons! The machine just kept pumping out the blocks, about 2700, to be exact. Our job was to move each block along the network of rollers and into the neatly stacked piles. The end goal is 5400 blocks to be used for the straight walls in Dora and Baxter’s home. We’re feeling the exertions of today’s work tonight, though. I didn’t know I had these kind of arm muscles!
We also made progress on our stem wall today! Lindsay and Ryan cranked out some beautiful form work, ready for the concrete to be poured as soon as possible. Go stem wall!
Group meeting, pre-work.
The rollers! They’re fun to roll on, too!
C.B. pushes the blocks along their merry way.
The assembly line.
Our beautiful pressed blocks!
Glamour shot of the blocks in action.
Assembly line workers hold the most coveted jobs.
Looking at Hank work through a tunnel of CMU.
Our CMU stash.
Atsushi, quality control.
Even Baxter helped us out today!
But who can forget the illustrious work of the stem wall form work creators, Ryan and Lindsay?
Sunlit stem wall majesty.
The crew by the light of the sunset.
dbBdb (DesignBuildBLUFF Dinner Blog): Dennis treated us to a feast of vegetarian burritos. Nothing but the finest tortillas, beans, rice, cheese, lettuce, salsa, tomatoes, and avocadoes for us tonight! Scrumptious!
Snow and rain didn’t scare us away from hiking National Bridges National Park today. Although the morning was pretty lazy, the afternoon brought a vigorous 8-mile hike through a serpentine canyon to several incredible natural stone bridges. We even braved a little snow flurry to complete our trek through the natural beauty. Our timing was perfect, for we caught the sunset at the very end of our hike.
While the hikers had an incredible time, Monica, Hunter, and Eric stayed behind to help set up the adobe brick making machine. Those workaholics. But thanks to their efforts, we’ll be making bricks tomorrow! Fun times!
In the evening, after an amazing dinner (as usual), we experienced a bit of a scare when the power went out at the Scorup House and throughout the whole town of Bluff! We lit candles to play games by, but almost as soon as all of the candles were lit, the power returned to the house. We were excited to have a little “lights out” experience.
Rock formations at National Bridges National Park.
Sipapu Bridge.
Sipapu Bridge.
Ryan at the base of the canyon.
Ooooh . . . sunset.
Totally awesome dinner. Eric and Lindsay rocked the house with their ribs and chicken, slow-roasted to perfection and smothered in sassy barbeque sauce. Of course, what Southern feast would be complete without baked beans, coleslaw, and cornbread? Every one of us was stuffed with barbequed goodness.
I hope you like pictures because today there’s lots! In a single day, all of us completed the shed at the Scorup House! We’re like Shed Superheroes or Shed Superbuilders or something like that. We hammered, sawed, screwed, cut, designed and built a genuine, 100% structurally sound, free-standing shed. Our shed features aluminum column supports, holding a roof composed of TJI beams, doubled 2X6 rafters, aluminum purlins, and corrugated metal covering. We even included two very sweet looking skylights. The walls are currently made of wooden pallets. Pretty good for student work. The weather was gorgeous and we worked to the sound of tunes blasting from Talvy’s truck. In our excitement to complete the job, we worked into the night. Actually, we were more excited about a potential trip to Canyon de Chelley tomorrow (hinged upon the completion of the shed) than about the actual shed. Just kidding. It’s beautiful. With our work done, though, we’re free to explore the great outdoors tomorrow!
Nothin‘ like blue sky and the smell of
TJI’s in the morning.
Staring down the scaffolding.
Ryan and Eric care for the shed in its infant stages.
Two thumbs way up to working! Supervising is a key event in every project’s lifetime. Houses usually only require one supervisor, but sheds most certainly require three.
Atsushi single handedly holds up the shed. Without him holding it up for 19 hours today, it would have surely fallen in a heap to the ground. “Props” to Atsushi for propping this thing up!
Talvy makes some crucial cuts into the roofing material and not into Hank’s feet.
The
Talvy cut–clean, cool, and smooth. Just like
Talvy. Maybe minus the clean part.
Rafter building with Kaitlin.
The stretch. A classic move. “Oh . . . uh . . . how did my arm get there?”
“Smashing Carhartts you’re wearing on this fine day, Sir Talvy!”
“And what smart sunglasses and cap you sport, old chap Eric! Might I borrow them some time to impress my lady friend at home?”
“Ho, ho, ho! But of course, dear Talvy!”
Friendly banter in the love seat.
Group shed shot.
High performance flying rafters.
The shed gleams, in all of its celestial glory.
Cigar, chalk line . . . what more do you need?
Hunter, drill extraordinaire.
Rafters and purlin. Pat Tripeny and that roof design assignment, eat your heart out.
Some horse-chewed wood!
Matt.
The oldest living thing in Bluff. I found it next to the compost heap. According to my carbon dating, I’m pretty sure it’s a jack-o-lantern dating from approximately 24 years ago. Or it’s Matt’s long lost twin.
The shed nears completion.
Lindsay braves the height and drills in all of the roofing material.
One of the sweetest details in the shed. Who knew purlins could be so devastatingly good looking?
Roof, roof!
The pallet walls by night.
Dinner blog: I don’t know how we manage to do it, but each dinner just gets better and better! Tonight’s meal took us on a trip to Mexico. We enjoyed homemade enchiladas, courtesy of Hunter and Monica. By homemade, I mean homemade tortillas, sauce, everything. These delicious little wonders were topped with crema mexicana, queso cotija, y cilantro and served with frijoles negros y mangoes, bananas, y pineapple drizzled with sweetened condensed lechera. Muy bien! Yo quiero Mexican food! (A note to the reader: Camille is learning Spanish. Key word: learning.)
Caroline has truly made the house into a home. Mark, John, and I took a long weekend to see how Caroline and Audrey have been, to take care of a few odds and ends, and to see how the house is working. They really love the place and save for a few issues, the house works pretty well. There is a distinct temperature difference between outside and inside, the interior being warmer. That good since it’s winter down there now. Caroline says that the house keeps a pretty consistent temperature, but the mornings are cool which is expected. They said that they usually start a fire in the morning. They are still waiting on electricity, so they aren’t able to use the cistern yet, but they are using the water runoff from the scupper on the south end which they currently collect in the blue can in the photo. Even on an overcast day the house is well lit and didn’t need extra lighting. They also hooked up a propane tank so they are able to use their stove to cook. The space between the trombe wall and glazing warms up nicely and Caroline has made good use of the space to grow a number of plants. She was even able to get a cutting to sprout from one of the largest trees in the grove. The green and other colors of the plants look great against the rammed earth wall. We might have made the wall too thick however, as they have noticed that the interior bedroom side surface of the wall doesn’t warm up as much as the glazing side. I wonder though if it does during the night while they’re asleep? The copper on the gutter looks nice with the patina that is forming. Caroline also was able to get some trees planted around the site.
The traveling group finds its way onto the Caroline house rooftop.
dbBdb: Mitch and Dawn laid down a feast fit for a Mexican king! They prepared fabulous bean, rice, cheese, green chile, and guacamole burritos, with a red cabbage salad, all finished with scrumptious brownies for dessert. Ole!
A good, old-fashioned shed-raising!
Or learning how to ride a bike. Believe it or not, you’re witnessing Monica actually learning how to ride a bike after 20 years or so.
I can see Matt’s undies