Past and future pours

Last Friday we did a big pour! All walls and bond beams are poured. And today Jesús and Gabriel prepared the portal slab to be poured. Leaving Santa Fe tomorrow, sad to go, too much fun to build! It will be exciting to return though, to install the kitchen cabinets and build and paint all doors and drawer fronts.

Gabriel is pouring concrete into the walls, while Abram is holding the heavy hose, together with Eric hiding behind the wall. Dave Bodelson rushing up and down, giving a hand wherever needed.

A heavy Santa Fe monsoon rain cleared the air and cleaned away the dust. Ready for inspection and pour of the portal slab. When Gabriel and Jesús were leaving at six pm today, I said goodbye to them and thanked them for their responsible, good work. Then Jesús said “Muchas gracias por trabajo” (or something like that, pardon my Spanish)… very nice attitude! And I am thankful I could provide work for them.

Pocket Art in the making

I am not totally taken up with building a house, I have actually painted a little also. Now I am working on a couple of Pocket Art for some of our friends.

Cleaned up

A few new pictures after cleaning up the site.

The portal wall to the right, with the chimney coming up.

The bearing walls are up, a few more framed walls will come up soon. The pipe sticking up in the floor is for the ice maker in the freezer.

The inside fireplace is built. When the roof is on, the chimney will be extended.

The fireplace for the portal is also done, except for the completion of the chimney. The wall to the right of the chimney will have an opening with classic shutters.

Slow, but nevertheless progress

It seems like we have been moving along at a slow pace, but we are making progress and the next concrete pour is scheduled for Friday this week. Joe, fireplace builder, is here building the two fireplaces and chimneys. Meanwhile the walls are being completed, maybe we will also be able to pour the slab for the portal (patio under roof in Santa Fe lingo).

Joe is working on the chimney in the studio. Some people have asked if we are going to have an octagonal window, haha… no, it will be a traditional, “historic” window.

Today we will be able to clean up and remove the material that is not needed. The walls are complete, now we are tying in everything, getting ready to pour concrete inside the walls.

This is the fireplace for the portal, the “outside” room. Hopefully we will be bale to pour the slab here on Friday.

The walls are slowly coming up

Dave Bodelson has only two guys here, Gabriel and Abram – very good guys! They are diligently and carefully erecting the walls and the rooms are taking shape.

Kitchen cabinets, fireplace and construction site

The cabinets for the kitchen are built, the drawers are built and mounted on Bluhm drawer slides – “all” that remains is to make the cabinet doors and drawer fronts, which I plan to make in August. The  studio fireplace got off to a good start and the site got cleaned up and prepared for continued building of the walls.

Fireplace being built

Joe, our master fireplace builder, is swinging his trowel with ease and elegance and all of a sudden it is evident that this is going to be a classic beautiful kiva fireplace! Exciting!

Slow and not so slow

After we got our concrete floor it has been quiet at the site – Dave Bodelson has too many jobs and too few guys. Hopefully there will be action soon, we want full height walls so we can put a roof on it all. In the meantime other things are happening, such as digging trenches for cables to the solar panels, deciding how the corbels should look, building cabinets and drawers for the kitchen. All cabinets are built and now I am making all the drawers, got the first “prototype” built with a bit of trial and error. The first drawer came out ok, the next seven will be easier to build now that I know how.

Early morning pour

At 6 am sharp the first concrete truck arrived and Dave Bodelson’s crew started pouring the concrete. Before eight it was quiet again, before nine Lalo and his buddies were “walking” on the concrete, working it with trowels. Pretty exciting!

Dave Bodelson getting dirty in the “mud”.

Plumbing and cabinets

The radiant heating and plumbing boxes in the walls are done, ready for concrete pour tomorrow at 6 am! A lot of stuff is happening, such as work on the irrigation, etc. and I am trying to focus on the kitchen cabinets, both painting some and building them.