Gratz Industries HQ: Laying Cement Blocks

Time for your Gratz HQ construction update! Seriously, can I take a second here and just say that it blows my mind we're having a house built? It really staggers me when I stop and think about it, which, since it's being built outside the room I'm using for an office, is pretty much all the time.


Monday morning a BIG truck delivered palettes of cement block, and the crew got busy laying them out on the poured cement.

And of course Progress Energy chose that morning to come out and reroute the exposed power line! Which, um, the guys buried under the dirt beneath the poured cement foundation. Luckily Progress Energy didn't have to tear that up, but they did mess up some of the meticulously measured plumb lines the guys had set up Friday.

Then, with the bricklayers and Progress Energy already doing their respective things, the sand truck arrived! It was becoming a regular work site.

But of course, Monday afternoon, the rains came. Again. Progress had finished up, but work on the cement block foundation got interrupted. Check out that standing water!

Tuesday was a drying day, but Wednesday morning the guys were back before Jo and I were even up for her Penland art class. And, voila! A finished foundation.

It was interesting to me, as a person who vaguely understands what is required of a proper foundation, to see this progress. At first, when Jo and I returned from Spruce Pine, I thought the foundation wasn't finished. Soon I figured out that those indentations in the block wall are where the big garage doors will exit onto our little porch. Why those are lowered I don't know - we'll see!