Week 99 (Annex Masonry to the 6th (!) Course)

In construction photos by Michael Tiemann

It’s Thanksgiving Day weekend in the US, and so you might think that the 4th course relates to our progress through dinner, but this posting is strictly about the continued progress of our construction project.  Due to poor weather and the Thanksgiving Day holiday, we only got a few days of work done, but enough to bring the Annex masonry up to the 4th course.  Here’s an idea of just how muddy things got during the past two weeks of mostly rain:

prethanksgivingmud.jpg

Our week began with the positioning of materials, starting with newly relocated piles of sand and gravel for making grout.  Here’s the truck making that delivery, about to tip its load:

annexgraveltruck.jpg

And the tipping of that load:

annexgraveldump.jpg

Another material positioned earlier were the architectural blocks, both inside the Annex floor area:

pseudo4inblocks.jpg

and out:

annexteleviewcourse3.jpg

and another view:

annexteleview2course3.jpg

From the above pictures you can tell that some grouting has already been done, but here are some details.  You can see that with our transition from 6″ blocks on the first course to 4″ blocks on the second course there’s a small opportunity for leakage when the inserts we made for the cells do not completely fill those cells:

grouttransition6into4in.jpg

The solution is simple: knock off the offending grout and later we’ll re-color the stained block top with fresh mortar:

grouttransitioncleanup.jpg

Going up one course (from 3rd to 4th) and suddenly it’s the walls you begin to see and not so much the pallets of blocks:

annexoverviewsecourse4.jpg

and again from the other side:

annexinsidecourse4.jpg

It’s kind of amazing how many blocks go into two wythes that are 48′ in their long dimension, 28′ long in their mid dimension, and 6′ wide in their short dimensions.  (It’s 328 linear feet, not accounting for door voids.)

Here’s one more view showing the progress toward the North end of the annex (where our RPG bass-trapping front wall will be):

annexnwcourse4.jpg

In the mean time, work is well under way to finish the soffits under the Music Room roof.  Here’s some of the custom-milled, custom-shaped, and custom-treated Cypress that will be used for that:

cypressmaterialuppersoffit.jpg

Before the boards are installed, the unseen side is scored so that the boards won’t crack on the side you do see:

cypressstressrelief.jpg

And then it’s put up:

cypresssoffitfirstboard.jpg

And, after a few days, we have a corner starting to develop:

cypresssoffitthirdboard.jpg

We are scheduled to have a glorious weekend, followed by showers on Monday…hopefully we’ll get back to a good stride soon.

NEWSFLASH: one team of masons decided that the glorious weather we had on Saturday was a great time to do some additional work, so here are some photos from that day’s work…

The first block of the sixth course is laid up:

annexfirstblockcourse6.jpg

And more:

annexnecourse6outer.jpg

And before you know it, that wall is fully done at the 6th course (the outer wythe, anyway):

annexnecourse6done.jpg

And now it really does look like we’re starting to have walls:

annexoverviewsecourse6.jpg

Now I’m looking forward to next week!