This post is at least a couple of months overdue. Things moved along at a brisk pace during this time and – much to my displeasure – sitting in an air-conditioned room on a soft chair in front of a computer screen wasn’t an option.

We spent nearly ten months staring at pallets of bricks. They were delivered in October 2013 – back when the whole team had optimistic thoughts about how quickly this house would go up.  We’re all older and wiser now.

Here are the bricks back when they were new and clean and hopeful (they do look hopeful, don’t they?).

Unlike some of the crews before them, the brickmasons were marvelous.  Skilled laborers who showed up on time and worked their arses off in the heat – you can’t ask for more than that when building a house.

They found ingenious ways to make shade – and let me tell you, it was needed. White brick + white sand + blazing hot white sun = blindness and heatstroke.

As an armchair anthropologist, I marveled at the way these men ate on-site. Unlike other groups of workers, there were no fast-food bags, no cold/stale leftovers, no generic box lunches. These men ate fresh and they ate well. Every single day.

They had a workhorse of a microwave that went everywhere with them. If they were inside, it was inside.

If they were outside, it was outside.

If they were both in and out, it was in the garage.

It survived more than one night in the rain too. It’s possible it was caked with magical supernatural goo to keep it running – I don’t know for sure because I was never brave enough to open the door.

We had no electricity at this time, so everything that required power, including the microwave, ran on a generator. The thing was obnoxiously loud and it’s a testament to the patience of our neighbors that we never received a noise complaint.

Avocado peels, lime wedges, tomatoes, and cilantro leaves littered the ground where they ate. BEST TRASH EVER!

Bricklaying is messy work. I recommend thick-soled shoes.

Working over the pond presented its own issues.

How many bricks do you think ended up in the water?

All buildings with brick facades use a metal support beam called a lintel to run bricks across doorways, windows and other openings.

They aren’t typically visible but the architect who designed this house decided to make ours a bit more prominent. This idea was great on paper – in the cool comfort of the builder’s office – but then we had to paint those bad boys with primer and black paint on some of the hottest days of this summer. I still bear the burn marks on my forearms from accidentally grazing the blazing hot metal. Side note – the lintels sat on-site for many months without any issue, but just a few days before installation someone decided to steal ‘em. Such is our luck.

My brain started swelling from the heat so there are no pictures of the black paint, but believe you me, it went on right after the rust-colored primer.

Here they are in place.

They look much better now that they’re clean and touched up by a professional painter, but you’ll have to wait for those pictures because I can only focus on one thing at a time since the whole ‘heat-swollen brain’ thing.

Mark requested a 1/3 running bond brick pattern for the house. If you’re clueless like me, here’s a handy visual tutorial on brick patterns (many thanks to http://www.triton.edu for this image).

Mark decided a large brick wall featured prominently on the front of the house was not aesthetically pleasing so he designed four “soldiers” to guard the garage. Once again, I was clueless and would’ve never thought of turning the bricks to make a more interesting pattern. Our soldiers look great now, but I think they’ll be truly stunning with some landscaping and lighting in the future.

The crew did a decent job of cleaning up after themselves, but I’m pretty sure bricks are like rabbits and multiply exponentially. We will never finish picking them all up.

Jordan, our neighbor’s not-confined-in-a-fenced-yard dog, stopped by to inspect the brickmasons’ work. This visit was important enough for her to bring a friend – a pug my mother-in-law started calling Monsieur. I don’t know if it’s the dog’s real name or not, but it stuck. Now I find myself yelling “Monsieur! Go poop in your own yard!” regularly. Sometimes I use a fake French accent to keep things interesting. I really wish their owners wouldn’t let them roam. I worry for their safety.

Mid-July rain caused a few delays and made maneuvering the site difficult. I may or may not have made “walk the plank” jokes in a ridiculously bad pirate voice around this time. My jokes may or may not have been ignored.

Here’s what it looked like after the brickmasons left, but before the roofers finished their work.

Up next: the finished roof, the front door area, and the balcony! After that we’ll move on to posts about the inside.