…and the house takes shape

We’ve been busy laying bricks, taking advantage of dry, warm days, and waiting out the cold and wet ones. Poor weather days provide opportunity for gringo block production, lintel sanding, and clay screening – so all’s not lost on wintry days. Although we really couldn’t have asked for a better winter season for laying adobes, as it’s been unusually dry and warm, we’ve had to submit to the will of the skies on several days when the weather just hasn’t been ideal for wall building. The main task, however, remains the laying of the adobes.

Despite the variable weather, our recent production has been steady to start the 2018 year. We’ve now completed our 15th adobe course – 15 of 20 total courses. I’ve moved from using a 2′ ladder to a 4′ ladder. The walls are 6′ tall as measured from what will be the finished floor height. As the walls get higher, it slowly becomes more strenuous to get the adobes up on the wall. It’s becoming even more of a workout than it already was! Carrying adobes up a ladder is hard work. At the end of a day I feel all those stabilizer muscles used throughout the day to counter-balance the weight of the adobe in my hands as I stand atop the ladder and lay the adobe in place on top of the wall.

But now when you stand back and take a look at the house, you really start to feel the presence of the building. You’re no longer staring over the walls, but at them. When you’re working from inside the house, you feel like you’re inside the house. You get a sense of the rooms and what they’ll be like when completed. As the courses of adobes climb ever higher up the sides of the window and door openings, you finally experience the openings as the portals between the inside and out that they were intended to be. It’s amazing to see the house slowly take shape from week to week. The change is gradual, but it is noticeable and rewarding.