Alicia's Drudgery

After fearfully and carefully removing what precarious bricks remained intact under the south basement window, I was set to rebed the bricks.

 Scary gaping holes 

Although she had much more pressing and infinitely more enjoyable things to do, Alicia insisted on assisting me with the brick laying.

I can't even guess how many bricks we laid, since it was two wythes worth. I mixed about 15 batches of mortar, though....phew-- a good workout.

Alicia really, really hates laying bricks. She had a bad attitude, but I loved having her there. I don't mind it, but enjoy tuckpointing more. It goes MUCH faster with two people. I only have a little more to do on this wall!

 Gorgeous and almost done!

I am starting on a trial basis as an interview transcriptionist and potentially a research assistant for a journalist/author tomorrow. I am hoping it works out! April will be a busy month for modeling, too, so that is going well.

What weekend??

Happy Friday!

Hello! One last yummy hardware photo: it's a crowd pleaser!

Now, on to the helical ties, finally. I know you've been dying to know all about them...

I drill a hole in the brick with my new beloved tool, a rotary hammer.

The hole goes all the way into the next wythe of brick. It goes fast and is painless.

Then I switch to the bit that installs the helical tie. Pow, pow, pow, it's in, again -- painless -- except for the two out of 60 or so that wouldn't go in all the way.

So basically, it just ties the layers of bricks together and makes things more structurally sound in the big picture.

But today, I was rebedding bricks. Wow, twenty-two bricks in an entire work day -- that's hauling ass all day. Oh, and I had to knock out all of the rotten ones first. Several double batches of mortar. I really want an electric mortar mixer, but alas, not now. (I really want another tattoo, also, but that's not going to happen either, sigh).

More bricks tomorrow, although I am dying to play my guitar!

A Very Long Day

Jodi is modeling for a class at the moment - 6-10 tonight. I thought I would keep her promise and blog something. Let's see...we started the day by driving to the edge of town and loading the car with free wood from a dead, downed tree. The days are getting warm, but the nights are still hitting the 20s and that makes for a cold house. We're trying not to use the heating system until we get the insulation in the attic, which won't happen until summer. After a $1500 heating bill we decided that building fires was a fun and useful project.  

With the rest of her day Jodi drilled and hammered special rods into the bricks to help support the structure of our walls. This is a project that starts in the basement and will continue up all four of the floors. Hundreds of these guys. She also re-bed bricks, went to the gym and now she has a modeling job. Whew! For anyone that knows Jodi well, this is just a typical day.

I'm in the studio where I've been since early this morning, working hard to sculpt and cast a good handful of figures for the Romeo Project. As soon as I get enough I will photograph them and start asking for grants. I priced the cost of having an art caster do the casting for me since the sculpting takes so long and there are so many figures to deal with. Uh-hem. Let's just say that I can do it for a lot less than $100,000 and that's if I only do one cast of 100 figures. So I'm making molds. I'm also trying to make something new for an art fair that happens in May and I'm trying to get everything together for a video I'll be producing in Seattle in a couple of weeks. It's hard to sit down and sculpt with so much to do, but in the end I have to tell myself that this IS my job. I'll leave you with a photo of Elizabeth. She will be one of Juliet's love interests in this installation. Yes, this will be Queen Elizabeth. I'm a huge fan of historical fiction and since Romeo & Juliet was written in the Elizabethan Era and since Elizabeth is famous for never marrying, I thought I would add my own twist to the story. She (Elizabeth) will be dressed to the hilt from head to toe, but she's still a little naked after today's sculpting.

If you don't know anything about the Romeo Project, click on the underlined words above to go to the description.  

                                            

...and this is me in my f'ing 40s wearing stupid readers to sculpt, read, work on my computer and actually see my own face in a mirror. Thought my oldest sister would enjoy this!!

Just keeping my promise

The day was spent almost from the beginning. I had to put off drilling until tomorrow, as it was time to go to work.

That's it.

Mish-mosh

Not a hugely productive day, again. But it was actually WARM and lovely, and frankly, that's all that counts. It hit 68 degrees -- our warmest day yet AND a rainbow! (barely double).

 

It was our first beer-thirty of the year on the front porch.

I knocked out some bricks and relaid them (like yesterday). The offending washing machine went away today, and we have $80 to spend on groceries!

Modeling tomorrow, after drilling helical ties (no, I'm not going to tell you about them today). I always laugh when I take off my dirty work clothes to take a bath before going to model... 

 It is a pretty funny contrast. They would all be so surprised if they knew what I was doing before I went there! Sadly, the bruises will show tomorrow.

Tomorrow, one last photo of yummy hardware!

Monday, Monday

A dumb day, as Mondays tend to be for me. Rain, hail, and well, more rain. Spring smring. It is a cold dark wintry day.

Instead of ripping through the installation of helical ties (I'll tell you about them tomorrow), I was stymied. Wah. Awaiting instructions from the architects = a pacing, restless day. The mortar has suffered badly from years of neglect, making these walls a bit dicey to reconstruct. I want to go fast, but -- as always -- it's going to go slowly. I knocked out some rotting bricks and bedded new ones. One wall has about 60 bricks to rebed. Sigh.

I've done five scare-free loads of laundry. The dogs nap peacefully today, whilst the offending former laundering pair are sitting on the front porch, tarp-covered and awaiting their sale.

On a happy note, I present my beautiful section of tuckpointing. I FINALLY got the color right (I hope, I hope). 

And, as an extra treat: an encore of delicious hardware.

Enjoy.

A new leaf...

will now be turned over, as I vow to blog daily -- until you are sick of reading the ad infinitum details of our "project", i.e. my work/my life/our work/our lives. Profuse apologies to those of you who have continued to check the blog regularly, only to find NOTHING NEW.

So, my (me: Jodi) brother, Jeff, flew out from Illinois AGAIN last week to help us raise the first beam. His method was ingenious and (from our ends) painless. I think he was picking up our slack. It is bolted and shimmed and being temporarily supported by two 12-ton jacks. I am dying to post photos, but Jeff won't let me, so if you want to see any, just email me and I'll send them to you individually.

I also installed some gorgeous, honkin' hardware that I know you lesbians will love. These reinforcing angles are big and heavy and the bolts are 3/4" x 4-1/2"!

Alicia got to play at length with my new mini palm nailer 

which I highly recommend. Even Jeff was impressed by it! Alicia was adding (psychological) reinforcements to the attic rafters. We all got a lot done in three days!! Jeff also helped me get the horrible, scary old washer and dryer down from upstairs (remember our old "headboard"?...good riddance!).

I must give a plug to Oscar, our favorite bar/restaurant/pool haunt around. I'll have to include a photo of it next time we drive out there. It is in the mountains and spectacular. We spent many, many hours there on Jeff's last night. It was a joy to treat him to a wonderful night out after all of his hard, hard work.

 On the day of his departure: breakfast at our other favorite eatery that is only about three minutes from our house: the Palace Diner. (Lakey was immediately smitten with this quality establishment). We frequent there often, especially for a delicious breakfast. We are now considered regulars by the hostess. These diners are standard sighting in this area, but the Palace is THE diner. Oh, we love it so! The sweet potato pancakes...!

I must say, that there is a definite deflation of momentum when Jeff leaves. Things happen much more quickly and intensely when he is here directing us and helping. There is so much to do!! I am quite content to do it all. I just wish that a.) I was being paid b.) there were more hours in a day.

Yesterday, for instance, I spent an entire work day scraping old white tile adhesive off the bricks on two basement walls. Wow, does that feel satisfying. Yeah, right. A whole day!? Next to remove the mortar (tomorrow) and then tuckpointing pretty much all around that entire room. I will have to post a photo tomorrow of my last wall down there. It is really quite lovely. I actually love tuckpointing, it is just so damn SLOW!

Today, we rented a U-Haul and picked up my ASKO washer and dryer from storage. You see, the old washer they'd left in our house seemed a bit possessed during its spin cycles. The dogs were absolutely terrified, as the entire house would shake violently. They would cringe on wash days.  So, now we are doing a load upstairs right at this very moment in the ASKO front-loader (yay!) and I can barely hear it, let alone feel it.

 No more scary laundry!

We also picked up a whole bunch of sheets of 1/2" plywood (more psychological reinforcement) as long as we had a truck. Fun, fun, fun.

Happy. Oh, how I love my brother.