The first strut! I signed my name on the top of it with a soapstone.
This is the pattern that will be repeated through most of the building.
It's hard to tell from the perspective of this photo, but I'm standing on the far end of a 50-foot tube. It is eight inches square and weighs about a ton. Notice the number written upside-down on the ends of the tubes. These tubes are for section U of the building. That won't mean much to people who aren't actually working on the project, but it's a nice tidbit anyway. For the record, the steel being installed right now is all in section T. Section U is right next to T.
This is Jon W. working from a Raymond order picker up in the rafters. I like this picture because from this angle the lift is mostly obscured making it seem as though Jon is standing on the rafters.
Zach W. and Doug C. are up in the blue Genie scissor lift working on the steel studs that will support the wall in the distant future.
This is me wearing as much environmental protection as possible. The column I am grinding on is coated with lead-based paint, so in an effort to not die I am wearing a respirator.
Matt S. is priming the ceiling in the areas where the ceiling will be exposed.
Zach W. is carrying away the bottom piece of the 'eyebrows' that I helped remove a while back. This piece is probably just under 25 feet long.
Zach W. and Doug C. in a Raymond order picker examining a structure that needs to be removed.
Stephen D. lifting a battery out of a golf cart for maintenance. We use several carts around the building to carry tools and transport ourselves with haste, but they are all very old and tend to need more care than normal.
Phil D., our illustrious leader seated in his favorite chair.
Doug C. on the backhoe scraping away the refuse of the old mechanical platform that we tore down. Shortly after this picture was taken we poured concrete to cover the area. Now you could almost never tell that anything was ever there.
This is the first rebar cage destined for the first footing we installed in Building 8.
Now here's a familiar pattern. The difference is that this one is in the very last bay of the building.
Again, here is the same pattern as before in bay 7. You can see along the wall our parking spaces for the Raymond order pickers and golf carts.
This is Teihe (pronounced tee hee) W., a welder from New Zealand. He is putting the final welds on a column where several steel tubes come together. Every place where steel meets steel must be welded, so each column like this one can take up to a few hours to finish welding.
This is a whole dug for plumbing. The holes cut in the wall are where pipes will be run into and out of the building. Each of those cores weighs a little less than 10 pounds.
Here is a better, wider angle on that same hole.
Here are a bunch of trenches just inside the building. Each one will get a rebar cage. Notice in the background the dump truck, which we use to haul off dirt. Also, our excavator sits behind the dump truck in this photo. This one is just a rental, but it is assumed that soon we will own one of comparable size.
This trench is actually inside where a wall will be. These pipes are the drains for the toilets in the women's restroom.
Another, more shallow trench for drains.
Rebar cages for footings.
During the wildfires in November of 2008, the sun is still high in the sky at 3:45, but the smoke from the fires shades everything like the sun is setting already.
