Sri Lanka It's Happening

May 29, 2007

My house building project is pretty much like crawling through the traffic in Colombo. In the city you get stuck at the intersections for long periods of time, but the moment you pass it, you can race along merrily, until you come to the next one.

Concreting surely is the equivalent of a busy intersection. There are two teams operating. One takes care of the brickwork, and the other takes care of the concreting. The concreting team is hopelessly slow. No that isn't right, they are just hopeless.

They took a month to complete the form work and then to pour the concrete over the ground floor slab. Then the brick work team took over. They have been working for just around 2 weeks and already the perimeter walls have been completed. They have been hampered by not having a staircase. When ever one of the mason needs to go upstairs, he needs to scramble over the scaffoldings like a monkey. Same goes for me. the difference of course is that they are used to it, I am not. Mortar and metal is being transferred using a bullock and rope. Bricks are being thrown!

Today the concreting team is supposed to start work on the staircase and that will be followed by the first floor slab. Let's see how long that takes.

Posted by raditha at May 29, 2007 1:39 AM