Block Wall Construction, Day 1

A big day today. With the concrete pour done, we’re ready to start building up a wall. The goal for today: get the base course set.

Hauling blocks from the front of the house to the back. Each of these guys are around 50 pounds, but honestly… after dealing with 80 pound bags of cement, they feel like bags of flour.

Liz, helping snap a line with Bob for the first course.

Liz, mixing up the mortar as Bob gets the blocks in place. I mostly hung out up top, passing along blocks as needed. Both Liz and Bob did the brunt of the work today.

Near where the basement steps used to be.

A lot of things in the way, but the first course is down.

Near 4PM, we discovered that the block I ordered (10″ deep) wouldn’t fit with the existing wall. I ended up needing to run out to grab some 4″ blocks, so that we could match up with the existing wall.

Despite Home Depot showing 100+ blocks at their South Loop location… I wasted about 40 minutes trying to track these things down. Ended up going to Menards and found the ones I needed.

By the time I got back, Bob had cleaned up the existing wall to provide the space we needed to key into it. Timing-wise, things worked out… but I ended up just being a material/gopher today, and Liz and Bob were donw in the trenches, doing the real work.

Related:
The Back Porch Cement Pour