ULOG: Rendering and Block Settings

What we aim to achieve

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Good day fellow stemians. It’s been a great day but one that I would call a very stressful.

Today’s ulog will Capture the two basic activities which took place on my construction site yesterday in a bid to show you the progress of work as I promised to carry you along till the completion of this project.

Oh, are you surprised I went to work on a Saturday? Don’t be. This is the nature of my job and we work on Saturdays because the project we are embarking on, is a time bound project and time bound projects like this usually make us work into the nights and even on weekends as we are doing everything within our power to get the job completed before the set date.

Well, just as a reminder. This is the construction of a mortgage bank for the state government, Ogun State government, just in case you are wondering what it is.

If you are into construction, who would know that it isn’t cool plastering a building under the rain. Before we left the construction site the previous day, we issued an instruction to the workers and bricklayers, telling them to take the plaster sand into the building because we had the premonition that it wold rain that night. The instruction went on deaf ears as the relaxed when we left and didn’t do what we asked them to do.

The instruction we issued wasn’t for our own good but theirs, because plastering or mixing a plaster sand that is already very wet is often very difficult and we didn’t want them to encounter such difficulty but perhaps they preferred it the hard way.

It actually rained that night (Friday night) and by the time we got to the construction site on Saturday morning, the whole place was flooded and the plaster sand was still outside and soaked.

It was quite difficult to work with at the time so they had to delay the job a bit and while they were waiting for the sand to dry up a bit, they decided to carry on with the gauging of the wall to be plastered/rendered.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term gauging. Gauging is done before rendering in other to get the rendered surface straight. If you don’t gauge a wall before rendering, you will get to notice unevenness on the surface as some parts of the rendered wall will seem slanted and different from other parts.

To gauge a surface, you would need broken tiles or straight pieces of wood, thin rope, plum and cement mortar. The broken tiles would be put in place with the cement mortar at strategic points on the surface of the building and the line and plum used to ascertain its straightness.

By the time they were done with the gauging, the plaster sand had dried a bit and so they proceeded with the mixing. The mixing was done at different locations and in large quantity so they could use it all at once to do a larger portion of the job.

Labourers mixing cement mortar with plaster sand for plastering

The job commenced and the bricklayers were spun into action and with speed and determination, were geared towards finishing the job all in one day.

Plastering the right side of the building

Plastering the front of the building

While the job was going on, my boss came into the construction site with a truck load of some other brick layers but this time with a specific role.

The management of the bank had ordered that an additional fence wall be erected next to the existing one and fortified with concrete for security reasons and so we dug the trenches, put up the pillars and got it set for brick laying.

When the brick layers arrived, they got themselves prepared and started working. The job was given to them on contract term and they were instructed to get the job done by Monday which they agreed to. By tomorrow, I will go check them out to see how far they have been able to reach their target.

Brick layer mixing mortar for block setting

A labourer taking block to the mason

***Masons laying blocks on the fence

It’s really fun watching these guys work and I am overly excited with the progress of this job. From the way things are going, I see us reaching out deadline which is the commissioning date coming up on the 7th of June. It hasn’t been easy but we are working tirelessly towards our goal and I am sure we will succeed.

Safety is paramount
So this is about my day…see you next time.

Hope you enjoyed the picture splash…All images were taken as snapshots from my Nokia5 Android phone