Upstairs Update 0.1

I guess it's about time I posted something again, and what would be better than giving a little update on what's going on with the building here?

The above picture is a look at what Daniel and I have spent the past two days working on. You can see the beam above and the old "frame" below. That lower part had to come out so...

...We got out the tools and the electric hammers (like a hammer drill, but not a drill) and went to work. The above is sort of a view of the same opening, but without the lower part. It took us a while, the hardest part being the metal beams that were inside the concrete (which was the white part). They were close together making them hard to cut off, which was made even harder because we wanted the cuts to be [close to] flush with the wall. (Sorry for the dark picture, I'll try and lighten it when I get the time)

We ended up spending a lot of time on those beams (which were really just two "L"s welded together). Daniel worked with the small grinder and cut all the welds holding the two pieces together, and I worked at making the big cuts with the big grinder. I think we went through about four disks on the 4.5in grinder and three on the 7incher (which was due to the fact that the cutting was always had to be done in a difficult position, plus the disks were really flimsy). I was just glad that we only had to do cutting on one end of the beams; the other ends were lifted out/off of the wall.

The next thing that was on the list to do was to attach some rebar braces to the new I-beams. We drilled holes in the walls and then hammered rebar into them (which was my job). Then Daniel welded on some pieces that went from those anchor points up to the beam. The wall we were drilling in had all kinds of rocks in it, so it was great when we would find places where the drill would go in deeper than just 20cm. We didn't get both sides finished, but that's because we ran out of rebar (we had been using pieces we had pulled out of the previous "beam").

Then, after we had finished breaking up, cutting up, and welding together we had to "clean" up. This was done using only a shovel and was accomplished to a good degree of success. The section of wall that has the pile of rubble at its base will be further shortened/narrowed sometime in the next few days; that's why our "cleaning" didn't have to be so great.

The push for us to get this done in the past few days is because the "wall finishers" are supposed to start sometime soon, and we wanted to be ready for them (as best we could). There are still some things that have to be done, like making sure all the cables (of all kinds) are run and making sure that all the boxes/outlets are in the right places. Once the walls are finished, most of the "dirty" work will be done. We really don't know when this phase will be completed, but it should be finished in the next month or so, unless some problem comes up (which I don't think would surprise any of us if something did).

It feels good to finally pick up some tools and start working on what we started on three (3) years ago. It's nice to think that the main part of the building will once again be usable and functioning soon. Between then and now we just have to finish what we can and be glad when the next phase gets done. I'll try and remember to take more pictures when we work next time. I know you'll notice that I'm not in any of the pictures above, but that's due to the fact that, like I've said before, "it's kind of hard to take pictures of myself while I work"!