We Top The West Wall

Well, despite the heat and ridiculous humidity, our crew has completed a portion of our house all the way to the top. The west wall is topped. We leap frogged our forms up to the 9'4" total wall height using scaffolding and ladders. The work gets tougher the higher you get, but thankfully it's also exciting the closer you get to the top. The bandanas may make us look like really cool pirates, but they actually serve a purpose. It keeps the sun off my shaved head and allows more air flow than my ball cap, which I think just received it's sixth layer of dirt and portland cement. Oh and .... ARRRRR shiver me timbers!

In the last set of forms we embedded threaded rod into the wall every two feet. When the wall is completed all the way around, we will use the threaded rod to attach wooden sill plates in order to fasten the roof trusses.

Once the concrete was all the way to the top of the forms I used a piece of 2x4 to screed them smooth. I also troweled them to make them look more finished (I don't have a picture of that). I don't think it was necessary, but I had the trowel and I couldn't just leave it.

Today, we went out there and removed the forms so that we could ooh and ahh over our beautiful stone wall. We recovered most of the sand that was used to keep the concrete from oozing out all over the faces of the stones. What was remaining we hosed off so that the paparazzi could snap a few photos.

As a special feature, we placed a heart shaped stone over our first door box. We plan to put them over all the doors.

And, voila!

Oh look, it's the happy homesteaders in their natural environment.