The bodega is complete and at least two workers are living there at this time. Others arrive by motorcycle or other means of transportation to work on the construction of our house.
Inside is open space with platform beds and a "kitchen" area. The shower and bathroom areas are in separate buildings.
Laundry hangs inside when it rains and outside when the weather permits. Hummmm...just like our house!
A large pole for electricity and life is good!
While creating their "home", work continues on our home. The backhoe moves materials around and digs the holes required for the footings. The finish work on the footing holes is all done by hand. Gravel is put in the bottom and compressed with a hand compressor which I will share at the bottom of this blog page.
As you can see, truckloads of gravel and soil have been delivered along with wood to use for forms.
With little extra room, everything gets piled close together. Watching everyone work in such limited quarters is amazing. When we first saw the property graded off it looked huge, however, our opinion of the size of our hilltop has changed dramatically!
Lots of large trenches, created by backbreaking work!
On the side of the bodega a makeshift assembly line has been created to build the rebar forms required to construct the many columns that will be supporting our roof. The workers work quickly and smoothly building amazingly uniform structures of different sizes.
These piles are only a small number of the 24 required. However, I'm sure they will all be completed in just a few more days. The men working on our house work very long days and often every day. They are working when Don arrives with Roberto at 6:00 a.m. and they continue until late in the day. We are not only impressed with the number of hours the men work but also, the quality of work we have observed. Good for us, as it means our house should move along at a good speed! :)
Work is also needed on the road to make our property easier to access. The backhoe never sits idle and on this day did some work to improve our road while waiting for his next project on site.
Here the road is being broken up and made loose to eliminate the holes that have been created. Once there is loose gravel and the area is somewhat smoother, the backhoe packs it down. I am constantly amazed by the talent and abilities of the backhoe owners that have worked for us.
Whoops! One of the large trucks making deliveries ran over a large water main and caused quite a loss of water and some inconvenience for our neighbors.
Fortunately, repairs were made but the main is still sitting quite close to the edge of the road.
Compacting with a hand compacter!
1 comment:
Very interesting, thanks for sharing all the pictures and insight, feels a little like we get to be down there with you why you go through all the different stages. That backhoe, it's working on a public road or is that on your property?
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