Day 5 - Bricks!

Content from joanne

Thursday - 15 November

Bricks! We have Bricks!

Exciting moment on the work sites today - we are working with bricks. The first task was to move the bricks from the large stack by the road to smaller piles at various locations inside the house. Obtaining our ‘brick moving badge’ was relatively easy since it included pretty much the same processes as the ‘concrete moving badge’ (see previous blog entry) and we fell into rhythm on this task very quickly. Site two also had an opening for Joanne to get her ‘Re-Bar Bending’ badge, which was actually quite enjoyable – underneath a tree for shade and standing up – still sweating buckets, but not quite as hot as being in the sun.

Mortar! We Have Mortar!

The next step for the teams was to learn the difference between concrete and mortar. The new recipe is one bag of cement, 8 buckets of sand and 2-3 buckets of water, although it is a bit if an art to determine if adjustments to the water content are needed.  Different sites add the ingredients in different orders, but the results are the same – a smooth paste with no pockets of unmixed cement or sand – not too runny and not too crumbly.

Training! Almost There!

Trained by the Pros

Both groups had their training sessions from the professionals. First you place mortar on the ‘brick placement area’ in a triangle shape (think large Toblerone bar) and make sure that the Toblerone bar extends beyond where your brick will end up.

Then, making sure that you have the big holes down, you place another Toblerone bar on one end of the brick (the end that will be abutting another brick already in place). Place the brick (big holes down, remember) so that there is about 1 CM space (although this is flexible), and smoosh (technical term) into place. The outer edge of the brick is supposed to line up with the string that has been pre-installed, the bottom has to line up with the brick (or line of the floor), and the edge has to line up with the previous brick to the side.

Scrape off the excess mortar, and plop (another technical term) it back into the bucket or into the space between the new brick and the previous brick. Each row has to be offset from the previous row, which is handled by starting off every second row with a half-brick. Easy, right?  Not at first – but by the end of the day we were all very proud of our ‘Brick Laying’ badges.

 

Barbie Demonstrating Superior Technique

 

Walls! We Have Walls!

See for yourself, this is starting to look like a house!

View of the walls from our rest area

Rob and Marc Makin' it Straight

Doors! We Have Doors!

Some of the doors were also installed today. Although for the most part this was done by the professionals, Erin did get her ‘Holding the door in place’ badge.

Every Job is Important

Supper tonight was at a Karaoke restaurant - private room no less! We did not get our Karaoke badge, however - most times we got a higher score when we did not sing than when we did sing - funny how that works...
 
Friday is a non-work-day for us, so we are all choosing from the multitude of offerings at the Tour Desk - zip-lining, mountain biking, shopping, spa experiences, and at least one fitting at a tailor!