Block Laying I

If I thought laying the rebar two weeks ago was hard, I had another thing coming! Ken warned me laying block would be hard but I didn't fully understand HOW hard (and tiring). The footer concrete was poured on a Friday, and the blocks were delivered to the lot the following Monday. We began laying them that evening:

I wasn't very good at block laying, so I turned the reigns over to Ken. From this point on, I just assisted by: having the blocks ready to lay, helping to mix mud, and keeping the mud joints clean and "pretty" in the spots they would be exposed for an extended period of time. 

These wood blocks are placed on both ends of a block line, with a string connecting the two. The string serves as a frame of reference (both vertically and horizontally) for placing the block.

The "chair" block is the 2nd layer of block set. As you can see in this photo, the block needs extra mud beneath it to reach the height of the yellow string.

We had visitors on Wednesday. Our future neighbors, Dan and Sharon, had no issue getting down and dirty:

Well, Sharon worked and Dan giggled

We took just one evening off last week (date night), and continued work on Friday evening.