Aiming for 25% of goal; $2K needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

This is what our house (or, rather, the construction of it) looks like right now: story posts at all four corners; the first layers of adobes being laid. We laid the cornerstone yesterday, and the walls are now beginning to go up.

Thanks to weather and our crew needing to take care of personal business, they'll be off until Tuesday. We need to use the time to regroup, both financially and in terms of physical energy, because we're both flatly exhausted.

Here are a couple of close-ups, for those of you unfamiliar with the building style. First, the laying of the adobes:

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

That gap you see? That's intentional; it's where our back door will be (or, technically, our side door, but it serves the same function). Those pieces of wood to the left? Those are known locally as gringo blocks. I initially thought it had to do with forming extra adobes, and the name derived from the lack of masonry expertise among a certain segment of the population, but that's not it. They're hollow, and they get placed in certain specific areas where, for example nails, bolts, or screws will need to be driven into the side (for example, for hanging a door). The adobes won't hold the hardware; wood's needed. Oh, and the name? It's simply because the wood they use is so pale. They don't remain hollow, either; they get filled with mortar.

Above, I mentioned story posts? Here's where that name comes from: 

Photo copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved.

Those penciled lines (and the hot-pink string to the right side) delineate where each "story" will go. In this instance, it refers to a row of adobe bricks, not to an actual building story. And those lines are actually incredibly straight; it's my photo that makes them look angled. These guys have, after a lifetime of doing this sort of work, an instinctive ability to do it right.

But . . . as always, all of this takes money. We've just had our most expensive week of the process thus far. I said that we shelled out about $5K between Monday and Tuesday? By today, it was about $7K, all told, once labor and other materials and supplies were factored into the equation. Next week won't be so bad — for once, it should be mostly labor — but by the following week, at the latest, we're going to have to buy the windows. That's going to be a huge hit.

So we really need to have folks keep sharing the link to our YouCaring page via the widgets provided on it. Please also grab the code from the purple box at the lower right-hand side of the page and post it liberally, which will give you this:

Finally, please continue to share the link to Wings's Web site. We have a fabulous piece by him on sale for 20% off, today only. The more sales we make, the less we need to worry about donations. And right now, I really need to get us up to the 25%-of-goal mark for this stage, with at least another $1K to follow hard on the heels of that.

Thanks to everyone who's given us a hand to this point. I'll have more photos before long (and hopefully, more thank-yous sent, too).

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.