The stack before the storm

For the last week I've had the pleasure of scraping about 200 old crusty bricks... doing so in anticipation for the, what I said last week, the soon to be stacked stack. Usually the kiln day happens on every Sunday. But today, being Saturday, we were ahead of the game. Last night I had some friends and part of the kiln crew over for a much needed veggie themed potluck. I don't have any pictures of it..but to say the least the food was excellent and the company even better. I have to say this again, but if you can ever pull off a vegetarian themed potluck, the food will almost always be excellent..because people just can't bring chicken or whatever is super easy..they have to stop and think..and maybe open a cook book.

Towards the end of the evening, Scott and I pulled out the computer and looked at some pictures of the kiln and started to talk about all the ideas and possibilities of things that could happen. It's been awhile since we really sat down and talked.. I've been here and there for so long it seems. But it got us riled up enough to make something happen. It was nice to get back on the same page.



Around lunch time I came home after doing some errands and found an email from Scott, not 5 minutes before, saying that he had set the scaffolding up. Come on Bobby, lets play!!!

I whipped together a couple PB and J's, an apple, some juice and some chips (wow sounds like a classic grade school brown bag lunch huh?) and raced over to Unionville to meet up with Scott. Indeed he did have the scaffolding up and almost right away we began moving brick. I took the first round of laying brick and then later, Scott did. Once we had the stack up to the shed level, Scott brought out his drill and removed some planks so we could continue through the roof.





It was a super nice afternoon..which started out at about 45 degrees and ended with a frozen windshield at about 4:45 pm. The high tomorrow is going to be somewheres around 15 degrees..and I'm so happy that we pulled this off today. The next week is going to be wicked cold.. so I'm so happy that we stacked this super sweet stack before the weather really gets frigid again. Since the arch and interior volume is a bit bigger than the plans we had, we're going to add a few more feet to the stack, which we didn't quiet get today..but.. I think this is a great big ole step in the right direction.




I'm really proud of the fact that these bricks are all used... I hope that it lets people out there know that even if a brick is super crusty on one side..it just takes a few carefully aimed whacks and the brick facing the other way..and you can use that brick yet one more time.