Our Friend Lynn

Meet our friend Lynn.  Lynn is building a house right next to ours.  In fact we bought the first property from her and then a neighbor offered us both some more land up behind our property and we bought it together, combined the land and split it in half.  We each have about 3.25 acres right next to each other.

Lynn's house is getting started before ours.  Her bank moved faster than ours so she started building first.  The footings to her house got poured this week and the block layers started today.  Her house is 28' wide by 34' long over a basement.  She will have a garage connected to her house 20 x 24' long and another level over her garage, where she will put an apartment.  Here are some views of the work that happened today on her house.

Standing from Lynn's garage area and looking down into the basement area.  The workmen got started today at 8:00 am.  The hardest part was getting the first row of block all level before you go up with the wall.  They completed 7 rows of the back wall before stopping for lunch.

This view is from up behind Lynn's house area.  See the little bay window area on the left of the back row.  The block masons say it has been giving them a hard time, as they have to cut the block to make the bay window support in this curve.  See the big pile of bloks in the middle of the area.  The basement will be 10' tall when it is done.

A lot of supplies go into putting up a basement wall.  12" wide blocks are required if dirt will be pushed up against the blocks.  They blocks are   12" deep x 18" long  x 8" high.  To make the mortor it requires a big pile of sand and in front of it on the left is a pallot of mortar mix and a mixing machine.  And see the white square to the left of the pickup truck.  That is a big plastic square of water to mix everything with.

Meet GB Gonzalez of Gonzalez Masonry.  Everyone calls him "Hulio" as the G in his name stands for something nobody can pronounce.  He is a perfectionist and you see him here shooting the levels to make sure the front and the back levels all come out at the same height, so it all comes together perfectly.  Hulio says he has built 36 schools, the Buncombe County parking deck where I park for work every day, a Haywood College building and many houses.  Hulio and his crew will build part of our basement too that will be block.

Another corner getting startted.

Here, one of Hulio's workers is working on Lynn's bay window area.  Everything must be perfectly level.

Working on the bay window corner.

The blocks that are special sizes around that bay window must be cut with this heavy duty masonry saw.

Meet Michael Giezentanner.  He is the project manager and will oversee much of the work that is done.  His father Harry Giezentanner is our general contractor.