"LET THERE BE WALLS" - - - and there were walls.

After 3 days, I am a huge fan.  My framing crew are Gods.  Ricardo, Julio, Juan, and the other 4 of them do things I only thought possible in the movies.  Their English is fine, if you just take it a little slow.  They work harder and longer than any other humans I've ever met.  When you hire someone to come fix a broken door or to enlarge your deck it takes them 3 weeks or more to complete the job, coming, going, farting around, more trips to the hardware store, yadda, yadda.  These guys have taken me from dirt and a foundation to half of a friggin' house frame in 3 Days - I kid you not.  3 days.  The seven of them have together converted $25 Grand worth of raw Lumber, floor joists, plywood and sheathing into what you see in these two nearest photos in 3 days - Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  They show up sometime before I come lazily rolling by at 8am, and they're still there slinging timber after I poop out and head home from my brutally rugged air-conditioned office job at 6pm.   To top it off, they were pissed I wasn't able to get the Roof Package delivered by the end of the day on Friday (the building supply center is closed on the weekends) so that they could get the roof up on Saturday.  Instead, they'll have to work on interior walls over the weekend.  Sheesh!  Now I know where all the trees went that the excavator neatly hauled away on the forestry truck about a month ago!  And PRECISION!  For shits/giggles I thought I'd look important and measure a few wall lengths against the blueprints.  EVERYTHING is spot on.  They are the ones that find the errors in the blueprints (like the 5 inches in the prior post that caused the Mason to come back w/a wrecking ball and redo his front foundation wall!).  Friday, Ricardo - pictured below - informed me that the Architect screwed up and forgot to allow 3" for the brick when planning french doors in the back - which now won't fit because they've framed it to spec. as drawn/designed. 

So now I'll have a french door (singular) instead.  Oh well.  Ricardo is the leader of this crew and the fine man with whom I interact mostly in this phase.  He is extremely courteous, calm, and friendly - most of the time...unless someone else has caused him to lose time.  He claims he's been framing for the last 18 years, and I believe him.  He also takes good care of his crew.  Like Juan - pictured below.

  I managed to snap this shot of Juan in the single moment that I saw him WITHOUT a cigarette in his mouth and sunglasses on.  Juan is an inked-up muscle bound firecracker of a cool guy.  The kind of guy I would've run with 25 years ago just to hit on all the women that he attracted but cast aside for parasites like me to scavenge.  He goes non-stop.  Julio on the other-hand (pictured below) doesn't seem to have quite the charisma as Juan, but brings his own amazement to the show. 

Julio will awe you with his circus-abilities to sling a power-saw in his left hand and a pneumatic hammer in his right, while walking across a solitary 2nd story 2x10 beam, firing perfect 45 degree angle nails into joists on the fly that he just cut. This caused me to go back and call my insurance company and make sure my policy was paid up.  Yup - I'm good.

Needless to say, all of a sudden this serene site has been transformed into a bustling flurry of constant activity this week with supply deliveries rolling in, framers framing, and wierd-ass Cicada/Locusts making a constant flying-saucer "Whirrr" sound in the surrounding woods, like out of some 50's horror B-Movie.  To top it off, the County showed up this week and dug up the street to connect the property to the City water and sewer system, as well as Duke Power setting a pole for power and getting the site "plugged in". 

So with that, I'll leave you with this picture from across the street.  It's been stormy weather this week, but most of the activity has been at night so the schedule hasn't really been impacted much.  I think after all is said-and-done with framing, these guys will have made up about 2 weeks of schedule for me in their quest to get'er done and move on to their next job.  However, they may very well be BACK for Boxing and sheet rock later on, judging from their performance on this phase.  I'm tired, and I have alot of bills to pay so I'll end with that.  Next time, it should actually start to look like a house.