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The Project: A 2,163 square foot house utilizing dry stack concrete block construction with a central courtyard and based on the Spanish colonial-era missions in San Antonio. The Challenge: Can a forty-something married couple design and build an attractive, efficient and mostly paid-for house while remaining sane, solvent and married? With no actual prior construction experience? Hmmmmm - let's check in on our Contestants and see how they're doing... |
| We're doing window headers this week - a bit of well-earned respite from toiling on the roof and a chance to work inside in the shade. We've gotten some rigid foam used for packing boxes and are cutting this to shape and gluing it in for our headers over the antique glass windows in the master bathroom. This stuff is 4x4 inches, perfect for fitting into an 8 inch wide block. |  |
| Cut slightly longer than the opening, I nudge these into place with repeated light taps from a rubber deadblow hammer. The foam is a very firm type used as cushioning to pack Dell computers into boxes. They snug up nice and tight against these old leaded glass windows. A little construction adhesive and they're firmly set into place while retaining enough firmness to stand up to a little cement, which we apply.... |  |
| ...by hand like we've done the rest of the house. We've already done the inside of the window pictured above - this is the outside. We've repeated the cutting and positioning of blocks of foam on the outside of the window and now apply a mix of neat cement ("neat" in cement work means cement and water with no sand or other aggregates). We get a nice, paste-like consistency to the cement which makes it spread like peanut butter. |  |
| A closer look at how the other headers are being built. We've cut 3/4 inch insulating foam board to shape and put several layers on each side, securing them to the 2x4x beneath. We cut a piece of plywood as a top layer, cut a piece of metal lath to shape and screw that to the lip of the plywood, folding the edge over and under and troweling cement in. |  |
| Working against gravity with cement is messy business. I try to ameliorate the process by using a dustpan, held vertically to act as a holder and catchbasin for enough cement to do this header. A little extra care now means a lot less chipping with a hammer and chisel when it's time to do cleanup. With as many doors and windows as we have, every little bit helps. |  |
| Want to see a rough floor plan?Want to be notified when we post new pictures? Just e-mail us! Want to see the rest of the story? Click on Gimme Shelter Home Page. |
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| Next installment: Hot Fun In The Summertime Click HERE |
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