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The tops of our cornice blocks has been treated with special products from HydroStop by Joe Devine who worked over the weekend. We did not do anything like this on the guesthouse so as a result, if we get a really hard, driving rain, we can get water trickling thru our walls where the blocks sit on, atop the other. It only happens once or twice a year, but when it does, it takes about an hour for the water to meander thru the wall and come out the bottom blocks. It is no big deal, since we have a concrete floor in the guesthouse and the rain has to be blowing sideways hard enough to blow up under the roof edge.

On the new house, the cornice blocks now have this elaborate dam system made with HydroStop.

What you see here is the first stage of this treatment.

You can see where the conduit for electricity, etc. comes out of the blocks, thru the HydroStop dam so it can bring electricity into the attic to be run where needed.

In the photos below, you can see how the trusses attach to this wood top plate on the cornice blocks.

We plan to put up a temporary wall between the partially roofed south end and the still-open-to-the-sky northern end. This will mean we will have a basically dry area so we can go ahead and order our windows and doors. Other building materials can be stored there too.

June 10,2024. Our carpenters are here today framing the interior walls on the top floor. We all just decided that since we have gained a bit of ceiling height with the specifically designed trusses, that we should have 8 foot interior doors rather than the std. 6'8".

We used the crane to lift the large laminated bean that went across the expanse of the upper deck on the porch. It sits in a bracket that Dan painted with spray-on truck bed liner. After it was in place, the carpenters put the decking boards on really quickly. Compared to the time involved with stacking the exterior walls, everything the carpenters do seems like it is so fast there is a blurr.

The use of walkie-talkie type radios allows Mike to know what is going on even tho he can't always see. The men also use hand signals in addition to the conversation on the radios.

We need to get some cap blocks from DAC-ART to go on top of the column ends. We will have to make a railing to go between the upper columns. Might have to use something made out of wood until I can afford to have welded metal sections made and installed. Originally Ted was suppose to have designed a concrete rail in the manner of the Venetian quatrefoil rail designs. He says now that is not going to happen, or at least not any time soon.

Bluebirds have babies in our crane !

Mid June...

We began to suspect that the blue bird nest was abandoned. Sure enough, we looked up in there and there were no baby birds and no momma. I wonder if the babies had enough time to mature sufficiently to fly out. It didn't seem like a very long time. We got the nest out to have a close look and there are three un-hatched eggs in it.

We are now all stacked up and grouted about as high as we can go until we get the special curved top pieces of DAC-ART from Ted Dial. We do now have the window openings determined "in stone" so we can go ahead and place the order for the windows and exterior doors from Weathershield.

We asked Mike to go ahead and move all the remaining cornice blocks off the grass so that it could hopefully grow in and cover the big areas of dead sod. After Hurricane Ivan we spent a fortune and worked so hard to grade and cover the destroyed yard with St. Augustine grass. We will have some cornice blocks left over it looks like and they will need to be trucked out. Mike lined them up along the gravel drive off the grass. Dave got out there on the super-dooper rider lawnmower and cut the really tall grass that had grown up between the blocks and I have lightly fertilized it in hopes that it will make runners before the weeds take hold.

St. Augustine costs twice as much as Centipede grass but is much nicer. We paid for St. Augustine after the hurricane so we want to hold on to it as well as possible. Really, it is amazing to me that we have done all this heavy construction for over a year and have not significantly torn up the yard. If you have the right equipment and the right operators, it can be done.

The row of frieze blocks that I painted with the concrete acid stain last weekend are now in place on the top row over the garage/bedroom part of the house. This row will only really be visible from the water.

We now have the location of the outside entrance stairs marked on the front wall of the house by Mike and Dan. You can see the pencil lines in this photo. It will be interesting to me to see how they stack up ordinary 'cinder block' concrete block CMU's and place the poured DAC-ART step treads on top. I may use cement tile from Villa Lagoon Tile on the vertical parts of the steps.

I showed Mike this photo of an old niche in a gate post in France. We discussed ways that we could achieve a similar effect in one of my driveway posts. Mike figured out a way to turn the blocks a different direction than what we originally planned. He is going to cut the side out of the top block on the left hand side (as you enter) and when the block cap is placed on top, it will form a little roof. It is going to be very cool.