Finished South Gable Wall

This week (March 24-28) work focused on the completion of the south gable wall (see photo #1 and #2 for before and after).

Work also continued on the north cocina wall. More of the original river cobblestones were installed at the foundation base and a few of the adobe brick courses were completed (see photo#3 and #4).

Also this week, construction began on the east cocina wall at the doorway. These pictures (photos # 5 and #6) show Bruce Ihle and CCC crew carefully cutting the bricks while Pancho Villa lays the bricks in courses. Photo #7 shows the wall a little over half way completed.-JK

Work Continues on South Gable End Wall and Cocina Foundation

This week (March 17-March 20) work continued on repair of the south gable end wall. As you can see from Photo #1, much progress has been made on the wall.

Reconstruction of the corners of the adobe building can be the most technical and time consuming as the new adobe bricks must be 'stitched in' with the existing adobe bricks (see Photo 2).

Other on-going work includes the reconstruction of the cocina foundation wall. The rebar cage was constructed and installed into the deep hole which will become the base of the cocina wall. Concrete was pumped in on Monday March 17 (see Photo #3 and Photo #4).

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A day later the originial cobblestone rocks were inserted back into the new concrete foundation to maintain the appearance of the original foundation wall (see Photo #5).-JK

South Gable End Wall

Work for the week of March 10-14th focused mostly on repair of the south gable end wall of the adobe. The wall had partially collapsed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The Direct Construction Unit (DCU) crew removed the adobe brick until a sound surface was located. Here is where they began the difficult task of rebuilding the adobe wall with new bricks (made on site last summer by dedicated volunteers and CCC staff!) and new mud mortar. Photo #1 shows DCU crew, Pancho Villa (yes, his real name), standing next to the existing adobe brick wall which is partially whitewashed. Above the whitewashed wall is the new adobe brick and mortar.

The next set of photos shows the process of pouring the mud mortar by DCU crew, Bruce Ihle,(Photo #2), spreading the mud mortar (Photo #3), scoring of the mud mortar before placement of the brick (Photo #4) and placing the heavy bricks (approximately 85lbs) into place (Photo #5).

Work on the wall continues this week. Look for updates on the cocina foundation wall and graffiti documentation later in the week.-JK

North Cocina Wall

On March 3 -5th, work continued on the north cocina wall. As the wall was dismantled, the river cobblestone foundation was exposed (see photo #1).



Archaeologist, Karen Hildebrand, explained that the foundation appeared to consist of various layers and courses of river cobblestone throughout the north wall. The west end of the foundation is composed of cobblestone which is two layers thick and three courses across (see
photo #2).





The east end is similar in layers yet but only consisted of two courses at the perimeter of the base (see photo #3). This type of foundation is quite different from the rest of the building.




After the cobblestone was recorded through photographs and detailed drawings, the stones were removed and a 30-inch trench was dug to accommodate the new foundation of concrete and rebar (see photo #4).



The new foundation will not be visible in the reconstruction and the existing river cobblestone will be integrated to maintain the appearance of the original construction.-JK

Earthquake Damage #1

March 3, 2008 Work continues to to uncover the many layers of history and the project archaeologists Karen Hildebrand is on hand so that each layer is understood and captured. Here we see that earthquakes have forever been a nemesis to the adobe. -RW