Category: construction photos

The last few construction updates have focused on the framing of the Control Room roof with the Annex masonry work visible in the background.  This week the Annex masonry takes center stage, with the completion of the top bond beam.  If you’ve been following the blog, you know why this is such a major event.  If not, refresh your knowledge with the postings from Week 81, Week 82, and Week 83.  (And if you want a really complete refresher, Week 86 and Week 89.)  The bond beam in question this week is the longest one of the project, and with some deep pilasters also to fill, there’s 25 tons (!) of materials to lift into place.  Let’s start!

Here is the last gap in the blocks to be filled before the bond beam can be established:

And here are the 100 bags of concrete which will combine with 8 tons of gravel, 12 tons of sand, and a ton or so of water to make our 25 tons of grout:

Continue reading “Week 104 (Finishing Annex Masonry)”

With the masons and the carpenters running full tilt, and more trades beginning to participate in the project, the idea that I could write a weekly blog posting with a suitably descriptive title now seems quaint.  Yes, we have begun putting up the rafters on the control room roof, but that tells less than one third of the story of what’s been happening this week.  So instead of trying to make the title tell the story, I should let the pictures do the talking.

The first step of the raftering process was the installation of wooden members into the bent steel beam.  Here’s what was built:

according to this detail drawing:

Continue reading “Week 102 (Control Room roof framing begins)”

One fact of our construction process is this: everything is important.  The blocks on the 7th course depend on those in the 6th, and those in the 6th depend on the 5th, etc.  Nevertheless, there are days when something extraordinary happens, something that opens the door to the next major transformation of the project, and this week was special because we had one of those days.  This is the week that we laid the bent steel beam that defines the roof ridge of the Control Room.  Here is that profile from the West Elevation:

This beam has already perplexed a few who have seen it, so let me just explain a few details.

Continue reading “Week 101 (Laying the Bent Steel Beam)”

This week features two parallel story lines: the installation of half the upper soffit cypress soffit, and the raising of the Annex walls to the 9th course.  Here is a single photo that shows both achievements (plus more which are detailed below):
Continue reading “Week 100 (Upper ext. soffit finish, Annex to 9th course)”

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:

Continue reading “Week 99 (Annex Masonry to the 6th (!) Course)”

Last week we lost a good deal of construction time due to the remnants of Hurricane Ida.  This week the storms were more local in nature, but just as harmful to our construction schedule, costing us a good three of our five working days.  But that means we did manage to get two workdays in, and that was enough to begin bringing up the walls of the Annex.  The story begins with a new set of storey poles (or, more precisely, the poles recycled from the construction of the main building, placed in new locations):

Continue reading “Week 98 (Annex masonry begins)”

The prospects for this week looked especially good for construction until Hurricane IDA decided to head north, and with her four days of mostly constant rain.  Fortunately we made some progress on Monday, and by Thursday we received our inspection for the electrical conduits in the Annex.  And a lot of conduits there are:

Continue reading “Week 97 (Rain, More Annex Conduits, and More Rain)”

This week we hit a milestone that’s significant enough to have a tradition associated with it: we fully dried in the Music Room and Booth roofs!  Earlier this week, word came in from our general contractor:

Congatulations to us all !

Our HVAC team yesterday finally shoe-horned 40 gallons of duct work into a 5 gallon bucket.  Today our carpenters completed the roof framing.

We are now deserving of the ancient German tradition that is huge up north and doggedly hangs on in the south ………. We now have an evergreen branch nailed to the peak of our main roof !  This signifies being dried-in (semi-permanent roof protection from the elements).

[…]

It’s taken us quite a while to get to this point, but now we are cooking with gas !

Rather excitedly,

Scotty

So I went in search of documentation of this tradition, and here is what I found.

Continue reading “Week 96 (Drying In, Part 2)”

Work continues on the roof, the ductwork, the masonry, and even the plans, but the most visible feature of this past week’s progress has been the continued work on the Annex Conduits, specifically the electrical conduits.  Last week saw the final placement of the technical conduits, locking them in cement, and filling the Annex foundation with gravel.  Here’s where things started on Monday, with fresh lines demarking the boundaries of the Annex Control Room (click on the image to see a highlighted version):

And then the disturbance begins…

Continue reading “Week 95 (Annex Conduits)”