The piers

It has been a busy weekend.

Friday Bill was up at the cottage shoveling the sand away from the forms and taking the forms apart. He claims taking the forms apart was the hardest. I guess we'd put alot of nails into those puppies. Then at home that evening he cut them up and drilled holes into them so that we could use them as face plates for the piers. It was a long day for him. He was already sore by Saturday, when we got up early and drove up to the cottage to start again. Not a good way to start your weekend.

Saturday we spent the morning remeasuring and checking levels. Gotta double, triple, quadruple, hextuple check them you know. This is the critical part. And so we did. Multi-tuple checked levels. Again. Am I getting across how many times we've checked levels so far? So, finally satisfied that we're doing just fine, we measure out where the blocks have to be placed.

Then we stack them only to notice that some of the blocks have little knobby globby things on them and won't sit well. So as we go along, we have to use the cold chisel and knock off any of the uneven globs. THEN Bill notices that some of the piers have ended up with the top level facing the wrong way. He explains that the direction of the split between the two blocks of the top level (2 blocks per level, then the next level alternated) must be in the right direction or the main beam will sit on the split a potentially weaker spot. This is a theory mind you, he hasn't read that anywhere, but it sorta makes sense and I'm not about to argue (grumble yes, but argue no). Besides, do we REALLY want to take the chance? So, we restack probably 1/3 of the piers before cleaning up and calling it quits for the day. We're tired, but it already is beginning to "look" like something.

Sunday, is the day to mix cement by hand (Bill's hand) and to fill the pier cavities, using rebar to reinforce it all. The face plates which I have put the 8"L-shaped bolts into site on top (just where we've marked that they must sit). So, we mix, fill, pack, place face plate, & mix, fill, pack, place face plate some more. About 1 pm we fear that we won't have enough cement (though plenty of sand and aggregate) and I run up to the closest Home Hardware to buy more cement. Alas, it closes at noon on Sunday. We are not looking forward to the prospect of having to come back up on Monday to finish up. But we slog on and mix, fill, pack, place face plate, mix, fill, pack place face plate, all day long.

As we keep working we begin to think that the cement will be enough after all (those guys at the buidling supply store are good at figuring how much you'll need for a project). We just might make it. And lo and behond we do. Though we work till well past 6:30 and don't get home until after 8:30. But it was worth it. At least until we woke up Monday morning and felt our muscles complaining.

Next week I'm going to try to get before and after pictures of the two of us.
Before we start work on the weekend - clean, smiling, energetic, raring to go....
then on Sunday late afternoon/evening - grubby, haggard, haunted look on our faces, dragging butt.

How is it that the stupid scale hasn't registered one pound less???? We should be skinny after all this work!!!! *sigh*