Next Week

The blogger will be on vacation next week....but the building will continue of course!  The masons will finish the walls this week and the grouting will be complete.  Next week they will waterproof the walls.  The electricians will arrive to install the electric underground (under what will be the floor!) inside the footprint of the new church next week.  Looks like the steel will arrive mid-July!

Wall Grout

This morning the cement truck arrived full of grout which is pictured here being poured into the block that the masons set.  The grout is poured into the block and the top is smoothed over.  Once dry, the grout makes the block a solid wall.

Samples, Samples, Samples

The finish samples are rolling in, lots of choices!  We have a "finish & design" sub-committee of our steering committee to assist in the final selections for the new church....looks like they will have their hands full in the coming weeks!  Everything must blend to achieve the desired look so once all of the samples have arrived from the stone veneer to the stucco exterior to the interior pews, paint, and even the restroom partitions we will gather together several boards from which to select the final look.  Lots of detail, lots of choice!

Steeple Foundation Ready

Ghostly dust tracks appear to hover over our steeple foundation!  Today's heat makes our construction site desert like and deserted as the guys broke early this afternoon to escape the heat. Follow the tracks and look straight ahead into the distance and you are looking down the center aisle of the church!

Electric Room

This is the site of the electrical room.  The pipes you see are the conduit for all of the electrical coming into the building.  They will be under the floor.  The conduit will continue to the transformer which is the large green box that you can see in the top left of the photo where everything will connect.

Egyptian Gatekeeper?

Construction and carnivals seem to go together well on St. Joseph property this year....the carnival even provided us with an appropriate construction gatekeeper, the Egyptian ride!  Welcome Jim Houghton Enterprises, the company responsible for providing the rides and a big thank you to our carnival organizers, the Knights of Columbus.

Concrete Block Walls

The work continues on the block walls that you can see rising from the foundation when you drive by the site.  The mason will finish these by the end of the week and then the waterproofing will begin.

Concrete for the Steeple

Delaware Valley Concrete is providing our concrete for the project.  This is a shot of the concrete being poured for the foundation of the steeple which is 3 feet deep.

Masonry

The masonry portion of the walls has begun!

Steeple Foundation

This is the large hole in which concrete will be poured tomorrow to form the  foundation for the steeple.  There is a double matt for reinforcement.  The rebar is shown in the front of the picture and these will be placed going in two directions for strength.

BEFORE and AFTER

BEFORE

These are the forms that shape the piers pictured below.

AFTER

Technical Difficulties!

My apologies for the last few days experiencing technical difficulties with the blog....we are back up and running!

Pier Columns

This is a picture of the pier columns which support the columns of the new church.