Ok, that was fun, but...

The concrete block work was an experience, and one we chose not to finish by ourselves. We' gotten about this far since July 1...

So that one night as we drove home, and it's like the 21st of July...we had only laid about 300 blocks out of 540 or so needed. This was going to take forever. We learned what we came to learn. We tried it out and weren't too bad at it, just really slow. So I said to Julie, "What do you think a mason would charge us to finish this?"

We found this fellow, Joe Staudt, doing work on our neighbor's house in the city, and he did a nice job. So we called and he agreed to do it for a modest price--we are trying to save money with this project, so this seemed like a no-brainer.

Here, he's set up. He has a small concrete mixer. This guy busted a whole bag or 2 at once, kept several trays going, ran mortar over long lines of blocks, and just generally had all the techniques that amateurs just don't have. He had the rest up in 6 hours...

Note the beam pockets. Note the thick mortar course! We got it square and plumb, but were having difficulty getting the centers of the runs to come level. This was because the footer tended to sag in the centers, maybe 1/2" to an inch. That may have been poor leveling, or could have been the forms themselves, as it was sometimes difficult to get our wooden forms to stay level. In the end, though, it was fixed.

This has been a lot about learning how to fix things.