It's about BLOCK time!!! (:

Like sands through the hour glass, slowly sifting from top to bottom, steadily counting the seconds to minutes, and minutes to hours, so then these are the days of our construction project.

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!!!

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???

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No NO NOOOOOOOO!  That's not at all accurate.  Let's try this all over again.

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Like gravel in a friggin' hour glass, constantly getting stuck and clogging everything up, requiring hours and days of yelling and beating in order to try to get things flowing again, so then these are the days of our stupid construction project.

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:)

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Much better. Anyway, things have been held up trying to get through the whole permitting process and also get our power line buried from the back electrical pole into the house main.  Finally we got that done which allowed our general contractor to start moving ahead on the house modifications and starting on the new back work shop.  As usual, when things actually get moving, they tend to move pretty quick.  It's the long periods in-between that cause all the grief.

Within a day they had the footers dug for the new columns to support the beams which will be used for the new 2nd floor roof line, the new chimney for the grill on the outside kitchen, and the entire pad for the back work shop.  They concrete crew came in the next day and poured everything, leaving it looking like this.

Footers Next to the House

The footers on the far side are for the circular staircase going to the 2nd floor balcony and the roof column for that side.  The next one over is for the other roof column and the closest one is for the outside grill chimney.  The pads for the columns are 2 feet deep!!!  That's not so much to handle the weight of the columns as it is to support the uplift wind requirements of code.  

The next picture is a bit more obvious.

Pad for the Work Shop

This is actually bigger than I had originally anticipated, but bigger is better when it comes to work shops.  :)  To meet code, the elevation is also higher than I would have preferred, but with global warming at least my tools and play toys will be safer for a few more years.

Then, after 2 days to let the concrete settle, the cement block guys dropped off the block on Wednesday and the laid them all on Thursday.  As I said, it's amazing how fast things go when they finally start going.  Here's the back workshop with a double wide garage door on the near side and the far side of the front wall.

Our Big Ol' Work Shop Takes Form

Back Yard Looking to the Front

 They also started the grill chimney which will eventually go up to the height of the 2nd floor roof, but first it has to have a beam installed to tie it to the house.

New Chimney and a Beautiful Home Owner

Next week we ought to be getting the trusses for the work shop and they should be installed and the work shop dried in.  The week after that hopefully we get the steal columns in for the new 2nd floor roof.

Of course, there's still that gravel in the hour glass.  :)

Catching Up Again

Once again we've have fallen behind on posting (OK ... so maybe it's just me).  At Thanksgiving we had a big family get together at the house here, but I didn't get any decent pictures of the gathering.  I felt it was a bigger priority to get the deep fried turkey and smoked ham done right!  :)

In mid-December we made a visit over to Mom and Dad Drago's house and enjoyed spending the day at Lego Land.  It was our first time visiting the amusement park that replaced the famous Cyprus Gardens and it was quite impressive.  Most of the gardens have been restored which had to be a heck of a chore after sitting unattended for 3 years.  It was especially nice to see all the Christmas decorations and the numerous kids there visiting during there Christmas school break.

Dad and I at Lego Land

 At Christmas time we drove over to Kara and Chris's and dragged Mom and Dad Drago along with us.  We had a great Christmas dinner there and got to cook up some additional deep fried Turkey and Chickens later on that evening.  It was fun to watch Kalia enjoy the first Christmas where she really has some idea of what's going on.

Later on that week Kara and Chris drove over to our place after a visit to Chris's brother over in Orlando.  They stayed with us for the days leading up to New Years Eve.  During the visit Kalia became quite infatuated with our brass boy and girl statue out in the front garden.  She studied them for quite some time seemingly impressed with how quite and still they could stay sitting there reading a book.

You are Such a Pretty Girl!

After a good long while she finally got a bit frustrated with them staying on the same page for that long and decided they needed a bit of help to move on to the next page!  She didn't ever quite seem to be able to comprehend that the book wouldn't move on to the next page!  :)

Comeon!  Lets Move On to the Next Page!

 Later on that week Mom Hannan came up for a visit and we got a picture of 4 generations of the girls sitting around the statue.   Kalia was obviously more fascinated with the brass girl than any of her real life relatives.

Four Generations of Our Beautiful Women

At the same time Nephew John came down for a visit having spent a few days over at Mom and Dad Drago's and then coming over to our house.  On New Years Eve we had a nice, relatively quiet gathering with John, Kara and her family, and Jessica and her family.  It wasn't exactly quiet at midnight when somebody who will remain unnamed set off fireworks from the dock, but everybody seemed to have a good time nonetheless.

Nephew John and Tina

The Goofy Youngest Sisters

Believe it or not, we have started managing to make some more progress on the home improvement front ... but that will have to wait until another post.