It don't look to bad if I do say so myself.
Decided to try my circular saw to cut the thinner blocks. We were not sure if it was heavy enough to do the job or not. My saw man looked at the thing and , yes, i will work. Read the directions the diamond masonry saw came with . It says to cool the blade down every 3 minutes with an air cut. I timed it for first cut. It took the saw man a bit under three minute to make a pass, adjust the blade depth for next pass and repeat enough times to eventually cut through so that worked out well. One cut and cool blade and repeat. By the time he brought in the cut block and took the next piece back the blade was cool enough to cut .
About 3/4 of a 3 gallon bucket of the local brand of Quick crete later and we have it this far.
You can see where we still have blocks to set in place.
This next shot is one of the top drought holes. The surround is designed for room temp air to enter the hollow parts of blocks at floor level, heat and rise by convection then come out the upper holes. The block also picks up a LOT of radiant heat that slowly releases long after the fire has gone out. It makes those cold winter mornings a lot more comfortable when crawling out of the sheets to start a fire. It looks really horrible at this point but once I have the ceramic tile in place it will look a LOT better.
Baggin' A Coon
The other night I was working inside and all of a sudden BOTH dogs went off like a five alarm fire bell. This is not something that happens a lot. Most people around here KNOW to not come into this yard unless one of us is standing right there letting you in. I figured it must be someone walking down the road but since the dogs just flat out refused to shut up, I let them out. Well they no more got to the edge of the porch when all you know what broke loose. There was a full grown coon out there right at the edge of the porch. The coon got him self backed up close to the front door porch hissing and spitting like it was completely crazy, with both dogs yapping at it one on each side, all three trying to get an advantage.
After about two or three minutes of this the coon noticed he had an escape route on the porch. Right now I have a lot of stuff we are sorting through stacked up on the front porch. There is a spot that basically makes a tunnel to the side small enough that the dogs could not go through. Once that coon spotted it, you could see him hissing and spitting, back arched ready to attack, taking swipes at the dogs when ever they came to close, with one eye on the dogs and one eye on that tunnel. He watched for his chance and when it came, BOOM that coon was GONE!
Any one I know would figure that this coon would be over the fence and gone lickety split after all that. That is not what happened. The dogs went off around the porch in the direction the coon has disappeared to which is to be expected. I figured that coon would be gone and the barking would die down momentarily. It did not,. After a few minutes my son went out to see what was going on. He put the dogs in the house still yapping like they had gone nuts and went back out side. He came back to the front door hollering for me to hand him his shoes, socks and coat. Now my boy is 28 years old. I told him he is to old for Momma to be waiting on him like that,. to go get his own stuff. Then he told me he had the coon in a bag. That was a good reason so I had him his stuff and he gets it on while holding this bagged coon. That coon must have been awful hungry as he had found a dog food bag that must have had some crumbs in it and had crawled in. That is where he was when my son found him.
The coon was released unharmed into the woods down the road from us.
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