Gringos de Marimán

This week we had a lot of other activies stealing the focus from the house construction. Cyn's planning an update, but here's a quick summary of the past 10 days: we rented a spacious casa on a beautiful hectarea of land; we purchased a refrigerator, washer/dryer, vacuum cleaner, and TV - yes we still are good USA consumers!!; we fortunately moved from the pequena cabaña before killing each other; I traveled to and from Santiago to direct the transport of our belongings - we actually took delivery of those boxes and furniture shipped oh so long ago from Pomona; we arranged for delivery of a winter's worth of wood; and we (almost) finished the complex process of filing our taxes. So much for the tranquilo lifestyle. But this is a construction entry.

At the end of last week, our faithful flete driver delivered a fresh pile of fierro. So, of course, the maestro started off Monday morning constructing a custom workbench for use in assembling the enfierradura (ironwork). Each new process seems to include the construction of tools or equipment used to complete the job. While this might seem inefficient, one advantage is that we'll end up with some useful items after the house is finished.



Well, this iron bending table won't be particularly useful, but Jose and Valdovino do make good use of it. Jose is cutting and bending the iron while the maestro assembles the pieces by wiring them together.



As you can see, the enfierradura forms a framework to strengthen the concrete that will be poured over it.



In the meantime, two new wood piles suddenly appeared. Naturally, the other members of the equipo quickly put together a few sawhorses. Now these will be useful, the cats will love to climb on them.



In this case the crew uses the sawhorses to put together the moldaje.



Moldaje is placed on both sides of the enfierradura to hold the concrete.



The moldaje and the enfierradura sections were laid out and the fun assembly process started.



The crew dropped each enfierradura section into place over the pillars and then wired up the adjacent sections. This process sounds a lot easier than it looked.



Cross sections required even more wiring.



Here's a view of a finished moldaje section with bracing added to support the weight of the concrete.



And so it went throughout the week. Tough work, but the crew insisted it was a lot better than digging.



I mentioned that we would end up with a few useful items after the house is finished. The maestro used some of the scrap wood to construct a picnic table and bench in case our furniture didn't arrive.



Fortunately, our things arrived on schedule. As you can see, Dedo survived the trip and he's back to work watching over the huerto. Looks like he has some weeding to do.



Hasta la proxima!!