Block Wall Construction, Day 4

Got in the top course of the wall, which is technically all “bond beam” blocks. Bob used a custom blade on the circular saw to cut down three inches along the middle and sides of each block.

The overall goal will be to set up a plywood frame so that there’s 1″ above the top of these blocks. We’ll also bend all the rebar, and tie them together… so that they’ll be nestled underneath the concrete.

This bond beam will be a continuous layer, crossing over all the blocks and tying everything together. If you imagine the filled cores as columns, this top bond beam will connect them all.

Thanks to Bob’s calculations, we’re going to make this top portion of the wall a bond beam, but also a step into the yard.

A bit of custom notching of the porch steps, so that we could fit these top blocks into place.

A view of the top course. Hopefully, you can imagine the concrete filling this section and connecting the blocks together.

I wish I had more photos, but… after a full day working, we all headed over to Crown Point to celebrate Cameron’s 21st birthday.

There was a bit of a bar crawl, and we met up at Super Bowl for the first round. Got to play some pool with Bob, and waited around until the entourage showed up.

The next spot was “The Great Escape,” which was a fun venue. Wish I had some photos here to share. No less than two separate people asked me if I knew I looked a lot like Steve Aoki. I took their phones and pulled up this blog post, and it made for a pretty great reaction.

Ah well, it’s a nice icebreaker at least.

This was an incredibly social outing for both me and Liz, as it’s been a long while since we’ve been this out and about. We’ve gone out to dinner here and there, but this was a pretty intense, talk-to-people social outing. It’s really been a while.

Everyone I met was incredibly kind and friendly. And we were all out to celebrate Cameron’s coming of age. We ducked out after two bars, but I have a sneaking suspicion Cameron didn’t make it to work the next day, at 9AM.

Related:
Block Wall Construction, Day 3
Block Wall Construction, Day 2
Block Wall Construction, Day 1
The Back Porch Cement Pour