Timely Delivery

When arrangements were made to deliver the bricks and related supplies on Friday, the only caveat I provided was the hour I would be gone to pick up a friend at the airport and deliver her and her dog to her home a mile away.

No problemo, was the response: the delivery would be made after 3:s0 pm.

So, of course, I left at 10:15 and arrived back home right at 11:00 am to find the front yard filled with a delivery truck and 2 men off-loading the bricks into the work site! They did a nice job of stacking them right along the edge of the property cleared for the construction of the brick wall.

I cried, "Halt!" but the boys off-loading the truck kept right on stacking bricks in the exact spot they needed not to be. I tried to explain to them why the bricks needed to be inside the chain link fence, but, well, the tall, well-built blonde hunk replied to my concerns about security, "If they drive by and say anything, just tell them they can't tell you where to put the bricks," indicating that we had a clarity issues with the denotation of the word "security."

When Rick and crew arrived at 3:30 pm as scheduled to meet the delivery truck and help off-load the bricks into the area inside the security fence, he leapt out of the truck on a stream of profanity. The first 1/2 hour on the job was spent moving the bricks to the side, off-loading the truck, and cursing all things delivery-related.

Then, we ran into issues about where the wall should go. As we tried to line it up with the fence, we ran into a wee little problem with the survey marker--that is a full 6 inches inside the fence outer boundary. This is one specific question I asked the previous owner: is the fence on the property line? He assured me it is, but it's not. I'm having the brick wall built inside the survey marker and will deal with moving the chain link fence 6 inches closer to the outside wall of my home if/when it becomes an issue. Until then, it stays put.

By the end of today, Saturday, the first part of the wall should begin to emerge. The plan is to lay all the bricks today and come back to grout it and put the caps on tomorrow. After I shell out another hunk of cash, it's then all mine--and so is the mess they make in the process, Rick gleefully told me. He's glad I'm landscaping after they finish because, as he said with a serious face, "laying bricks is a dirty business."