Gratz Industries HQ: Cementing our future (patio)

Not a great deal of obvious progress on the house today, but that won't stop me from posting a lot of pictures.

The day started early, as promised, with a 7:10 a.m. delivery of concrete by an Explosives Supply Company mixer. While I certainly heard this delivery, I chose not to roll out of bed to document it with photos. I apologize to all you completists out there. This is how things stood by 9:00 a.m. That's as good as you're going to get.

A little later in the day, and the short wall that will have both a regular door and a glass garage door was lifted into place. As you can see, the concrete has also been smoothed.

Another pic of the new wall, with the living room area now completely framed in.

And a good shot of the patio. The concrete comes right up to the floor level of the kitchen, at the back of this shot, but then angles down as the patio comes toward you, so that by the time you reach that yellow bucket there it is about an inch below the floor level in the living room. I'm assuming this is for water to run away from, rather than toward, our two garage doors. That's a nice detail I'm not sure I would have thought of, had I been building the house myself. See? There's a reason these guys are pros.

A view of the new wall and patio from just outside, where the cat will always be. (I kid. Jo's taken too much of a liking to it for me to banish it completely from the house.)

And another view of the new wall, from the library area. Again, that wall with the tall thin windows and the broad wall surface will eventually have a fireplace. From this vantage point, there should also be a nice view of the mountains--once that mobile home isn't in the way.

Tomorrow I leave for a writers' retreat in Chicagoland. Who oh who will be here to take pictures of our home's progress? No one! Though it pains us to no end, neither I nor Wendi will be here for the last two days of the week to see what happens. Does a house get built when no one is watching? Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if there's no one there to hear it? Can something exist without being observed?

We better hope so. We're paying these guys by the hour.