Here's some more progress, as of Friday evening. We've got 4 runs of blocks across the front and right side of the house, along with the bucks for the front door, picture window and casement windows. We've also installed braces along three walls and will finish the fourth on Monday. Then we'll build the walls to height, which will be a total of 7 courses.
The pour is scheduled for Wed. p.m.- I have a consultant coming from San Antonio who has done this a thousand times and it should only take a couple of hours to complete.
It takes place in two pours. The first brings the concrete up to about 4 feet in all four walls. The window bucks are built to allow concrete to be poured in through the bottom window buck. Then a second pour brings the concrete to the top of the walls and "J" bolts are inserted.
This is a view of the left wall. There will be three french doors placed in this wall, two in front for the den and one toward the rear in the MBr.
All of the doors open outward, except for the front double doors. There will be a covered wrap-around deck eventually, when the economy improves. (ok, my economy)
I just published this and went back to view the latest comments... Hi, Mom! Yes, we're being very careful and I only hit my thumb with a hammer for the first time on Friday, twice in a row but not hard and didn't really hurt it.
Paul and Lisa: Thanks for the comments, I'll try to post some doggie photos soon. Chase is growing fast and Buster is glad to have a playmate. I had to chuckle a bit about naming our path. Seems that in my haste to get a roof over my head I've overlooked that detail - poor form on my part and I do apologise. I'll have to put some thought into it so please be patient.
This looks fantastic well done with what you are doing, it looks very hard going but shows what can be achieved. all the best for the future will look forward to seeing the end result on the web from Christine and Alan in Yeovil Somerset England.