PROJECT DARKSTONE: Day 10

Feb 11, 2015

Our builder stopped by today to meet with the excavators and to see how we were doing and if we needed anything from him.  He kept asking why I looked like I was about to cry.  I didn't FEEL like I was about to cry, but maybe I was.  How should I know?  I am super exhausted from all this physical labor and I could be on the verge of a total mental breakdown for all I would know.  My body has basically stopped communicating with me.


We used the ManLift a lot today and it is awesome.  And so annoying.  It has a bum battery, so it has to be jump started every time you want to use it, which is why our car is in the back yard.  Sometimes it will just die for no reason.  It did that while Richard and Colin were up in it yesterday, so I had to get it started again myself while they waited 20 feet up in the air.  When both Richard and I were up in it today I said, "What if it dies while we are both up here?"  And then of course it did.  Luckily we weren't TOO high up and Richard just jumped out.  He is a bit of a super hero.  No big deal.

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Using the ManLift and his circular saw fitted with a special blade, Richard cut through the bricks on the right wall in the following picture, giving us that really clean line on the corner.

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And I hauled many, many wheelbarrowfuls of bricks around the yard.  See, the fun thing is that we don't get to just knock down the walls and forget it.  We are trying to save all the good bricks.  Half the bricks are nice, fired bricks and the other half are basically just dried mud.  So with each section of wall we have to throw the bad bricks in the bad brick pile and pull out the nice bricks and carry them across the yard to our Brick Saving Pile.  It's very technical.  And time consuming.  But I got most of the bricks cleaned up!  Richard sorted a bunch more that will have to be picked up and transported across the yard tomorrow, but I was very pleased with myself.  We're on the home stretch now!