The additional costs that have been piling up come in large part from purchasing extra materials. Almost everyday I am told that they are short of something, a certain material was was never purchased, or they need more tools. Since most of the materials require a truck to deliver this has caused delays in construction. I can hire a truck to transport materials at R150 or R200/trip, or I can wait until Build-It has a delivery coming out this way and they'll deliver it for free. Due to choosing the latter approach, I have often had to wait because deliveries don't come when expected so I have had to pay workers for days when they didn't do anything. I have smartened up so now when we are waiting on material to be delivered, I postpone work until I am sure the material has arrived (saving me about R500/day)
We realized at about the time of my last post that we needed to find additional bricklayers otherwise we would never get finished. Every bricklayer that we talked to wasn't satisfied with the compensation. A majority of the skilled laborers would rather sit at home, do nothing, and make no money than help improve one of their community's schools and work for R50 a day plus free lunch. I don't quite understand this mentality. Especially for a community with a high unemployment rate, you would think that people would take what they could get. In order to coax an additional bricklayer to help with the project, we increased the wage to R70. After four days of working at that rate, I realized how quickly my labor costs were adding up so, with the risk of worker mutiny, I pleaded with them to return to the rate of R50/day. Needless to say, they were not happy. We compromised and I agreed to pay the R70/day for two days and thereafter, the R50 rate would apply. I also requested certain workers not come because the site was crowded and people were standing around doing nothing.
Despite all of the struggles, the kitchen is really coming along. Here are some progress photos:
The slab and veranda were poured the day before and the bricks were stacked and ready to begin wall construction:
The double door in the back was set in place as they started to frame the right corner of the garage:
Framing the pedestrian entrance and front window of the cooking area:
The side wall of the cooking area starts going up:
They place the lintel over the garage door:
Installing the serving windows frames:
Jenga-style brick columns were used to support the frames as the mortar set:
Serving window frames now in place:
Custom windows fully installed:
Building up the interior walls:
Exterior brickwork mostly complete:
Until they told me that we needed to build two columns to support additional lintels that will support the walls that will cover up the veranda trusses:
The trusses finally start going up:
We don't have enough scaffolding so we tied some desks together:
All but two trusses have been installed and once the material arrives we will be able to complete building the roof and enclose the trusses on Tuesday:
I have made a majority of my purchases and am now only left with about R2000 worth of labor costs and R4000 worth of material purchases which will still keep me under my budget. The refrigerator and freezer should be arriving at the beginning of next week and the stove is scheduled to arrive next Friday. Due to additional materials that need to be delivered, we won't finish the roof until Tuesday. The floor topping should be placed on Wednesday, the plumbing should be installed on Thursday, and they will hopefully be cooking in it by the middle of the following week.
