Can you see the progress?

Appearances indicate that workers are making great progress on the library project. Exterior walls keep rising - at this point the second floor walls are almost complete on the southeast corner of the building. And, they have begun some work on the inside of the existing building. Yesterday they took out another exterior window. This is an amazing feat to watch as they "pop" out the old window (8 feet wide by nearly 5 feet high) and replace it with a plywood barrier. No broken glass, no mess, but a bit heart-stopping. They also began building a barrier wall on the inside of the second floor. This will protect library users as the workers remove cement blocks to create the openings for the storage room and tutoring center. Sadly, the wall will block our "bird's eye view" of the construction.

We Have Floors (at least one)

Lots has been happening in the past two weeks. The mechanical room (on the east side of the project) has been sealed again. The roof was off for a scary couple of weeks, as the snow fell and the wind blew. With plenty of plastic sheeting and a really dedicated crew, the snow did not cause any damage. The structural steel was placed and last week, the concrete slab for the floor/ceiling was poured. After that, the crews erected more scaffolding and they are raising the walls for the new second floor above the mechanical room. And, happily, the mechanical room (the heart of the building) is under cover again.

At the same time, they have been placing steel beams for the floor/ceiling in the center part of the addition (formerly the greenhouse). By the end of this week, they hope to pour the concrete slab so that this section will also have a ceiling. Then, the second floor masonry work will proceed there, as well.

We had a slight inconvenience on Monday, when some electrical work unexpectedly took out the power for part of the computer lab and our two public printers. It was a shock to everyone. We rerouted the students to another lab on campus for printing and the electricians got power back on in a matter of minutes.

Pictures on Flickr show how fast the exterior walls are moving. They also show the huge amount of structural steel the building needs. When we are putting our entire book collection in the new second floor, we don't want the building to "fall down," so we are happy to see so much steel. It is amazing how heavy books on shelves are!