By Wednesday, we began to take delivery of the white limestone rock that is quarried about 6 miles from my house. The owner, Jessie Espinoza, lives right down the road from my construction site and had previously stopped by to offer his help with my building. He also recommended Chava, my mason and ESI, who handles the masonry supplies. I found out later there are some close connections between all these folks but that seems to be the case with a lot of the subcontractors. Chava used to work for Espinoza, Espinoza used to own ESI. There are definitely two cultures: Spanish or Mexican and Gringo. What appears to separate the two cultures are: 1. language, 2. Music 3. Power or Authority and to some degree, 4. Money which is linked directly to #3.
Some of the Mexican Supervisors are recognizing the benefit of learning English and working WITH the Gringos while others in the crews have yet to make the effort to learn English and won't even look me in the eye. One supervisor told me, sometimes a member of the crew is jealous of what the Gringos have and even though they appreciate the work, will sometimes purposefully leave a mess.
Truck #1 I am anticipating 124,000 pounds or 62 tons of rock to be delivered. I didn't want them to block the drive since I seem to have from 2 to 4 crews on site at one time. I decided to pile the rock on the edge of the circular drive but they were worried about the weight of so much rock on the wet, muddy ground and to not get caught up in the overhead trees.
Load #1 Looks like a lot of rock to me.
After two additional attempts to make the ZIP tape stick on the roof, I admitted I was wrong about the ZIP System for the roof and asked the metal roof folks to put on a water barrier with this EasyLay Underlayment. Looks like black felt with a sticky backing to me. I had a lot of leaks and took about 5 gallons of water off the floor from over 10 leaks in the house from the rains on Tuesday. This had to be fixed before spray foam or drywall could be done. We couldn't put the sheet metal roof on until the rockwork is completed under the gable and flashing had been added.
The membrane is just nailed to the ZIP like felt paper.
I had attempted to cover the sand delivered on Monday and it looks like we didn't loose much to washout--just a little on the edges. One interesting item: the mason said he would need 50 yards of sand but he changed his mind when he saw how much one 18 wheeler held and said he didn't need any more sand delivered. (That makes me uncomfortable that he ordered three times what he needed. Luckily, the supply company gave me credit for the other two truckloads. I am wondering if I have too much concrete and stone now.)
Truck #2
2 Loads of rock--looking like a lot of rock!
Yes Truck #3
3 Loads of Rock -- I think the house is smaller than this pile of rock.
The roofing crew worked all day putting the membrane on. I found it interesting how this guy had the round circles in one hand and he used the nailing tool to grab a circle with the magnet on the end and with one hit put down the circle of metal and nailed it at the same time. He could nail twice in less than a second and a series of 5-10 attachments till he ran out of circles or nails.
A delivery from the lumber supplier, Hart Lumber, of the frames for the two pocket doors was also going on.
Truck #4 I finally asked, and he said yes, this was the last truck--Whew!
4 Large Loads of rock
The Electricians were also on site doing some changes and corrections like this track light that was in the wrong place. The portable toilet folks also showed up. At one point I counted 6 trucks including mine and three separate crews on site and trucks coming and going. Very busy place. I was giving out parking tickets for privileged places.
This was one area that was worrying me since the electricians couldn't seem to figure out how to bring the wire to the front posts for the motion-sensored front carriage lights. They were able to get the wire through the soffit today but now the framer will have to return and furr-out the posts to cover up the wires. The posts turned out to be solid 2x6 lumber. We did that instead of 6x6 treated posts since the framer said the 6x6 solid posts would eventually twist and I would not be happy. This will be fine.
Now I have sand, mortar, angle iron and LOTS of rocks.....but no mason.
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