Friday, July 25, 2008

One Heck of a Week, Only 5 More to go.

So thats how we did that. Why were you so nervous about that? Piece of Cake.

This was one of the best weeks yet. Things are moving forward and we've been on site a bit and it finally feels like its actually happening. We still don't have a permit, however, so that is the real sticking point right now. Our expediter keeps giving us the kiss off and just simply doesn't go to DOB when she says she will. We had to make a a few changes to the notes and the class that we are filing under, and so she has to bring in our modifications to the inspector at DOB to get the final permit. But, there doesn't seem to be much we can do to to put any pressure on her - all we can do is wait until she gets it done. We are really hoping that we'll have it in hand by tuesday next week. God, why does this all have to be so hard? I guess its building in NY though.


Johnny and Ralphie, thats one of our magnet-drills.

Steph: Fabricatin', Jim lent us that second magnet drill, thank god for that - never would have been able to get it done in time with only one.

Johnny and the Steel Fab crew slapped out the drilling in record time early this week. You should have seen them: He, Ralphie, Jon and Steph looked like they'd been doing this for 50 years. :)

I really can't believe how much they got done in such a short time. But somehow they did it, and we were ready for lifting on Wed.

Johnny and Ralphie on Liftin Day, runnin' the show from down below.

Lifting day was so much fun. We got so lucky with the weather - and everything went smoothly, no one got hurt, nothing got broke, and it was a complete success. Like I said, we used the Lull to lift everything up to the roof -Tony and the guys from Mega ran rig, but we had to figure out how to get everything off once it was up.

Jason and I up on the edge. Bring 'er on in.

Gettin' ready.

We received the Genies and the Grasshoper first, over the low parapet on the North side. I promise I didn't stand on the cornice. Honest.

Jason and Carrie, putting our new Grasshoper together. That thing was a champ!

Schulzie - keepin an eye on things.

So the issue with the Steel was that we couldn't bring the Lull in far enough to set the steel on the roof, both because there is a very deep cornice on this building but also because we maxed out the height on the Lull and so we couldn't sling the beams under forks - we had to load them up on top. That meant that we were only able to get everything hovering above the parapet, and we had to figure out some way to get it down and in. And under control the whole time. While hanging 50 feet up the air. ;)

Jason and I pulling the steel in as far as we could. Man, why is standing on a roof so much fun?

We ended up bringing the Genies in as close as they could get, then Jason and I would climb up and pull the steel into the tips of the Lull's forks and sling them to the Genies. Then we would raise the Genies up - taking the weight of the steel. Kind of a time consuming process as we could only do one at a time, but it allowed us to keep in control of everything and to let the machines do the lifting. Saved my back, thats for sure.

Slinging the Steel to the Genies. Up up and away.

That guy right there is about 600 pounds. No problem.

We were lifting at an angle however, so as soon as the Genies took all the weight, the steel wanted to swing in. So we had to keep in under control and bring it in real slow. Good thing there's so many of us cus' those things are heavy!



Once we had em in, we just dropped them straight down and then took em' away with the grasshoper.We tried to distribute them out over the roof so that we wouldn't over load any spot. Sometimes the roof seems huge (it is like 3500 square feet after all), and other times it seems really really small. We're going to start running out of space for materials and work space real quick. But for now its ok. We got almost everything done, but we had to come back on Thursday to finish and to get the giant Girders.

Meg carrying 300 pounds of steel all by herself.

Thursday we weren't quite so lucky with the weather. But I'll be damned if a little bit of rain is gonna shut this show down

Megan, lovin the outfit.

Huh, guess I should have picked up some suits other than just Larger and Extra Large. Sorry!




Same game as the rest. Just way scarier cus' these things were so heavy and so long. We kept it all under control though. And now its in!

Jon put together these awesome time lapse movies of the whole thing too (he also took all these great pics that I'm using! Thanks man!) - I'll try and post them and we'll see if I can get them to work on here.



But it wasn't all steel this week after all. Johnny's boys out in brooklyn did us some samples of the perforated facade panels on their CNC. We settled on a pattern and Schulzie and Jon got to work setting up all the files for the milling. We're making the panels out of a something called Richlite, a resin based MDF-type panel. Should be hot.

Meg, Solveig, Meghan and Tory spent a bunch of the week planting up in the Bronx too. Anthony, the maintenance guys here at school, is letting us use his back yard to get all our plants started since we can't be on site yet. How nice is that! He is the best.

So quite a week. Not many more now though.

Solveig, plantin'.

Meg and her vertical trays.

Tory, Meg and Meghan.


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