Working in Fortia
/My Work in Fortia:
Here are some of the various tasks I have done since being in Spain!
Cleaning-
So there is this room, I don’t know what to call it or exactly what it is going to be, but it was described to me as a mix between a library, dinning room, and conference space. Basically the best room of the house. The majority of everything I’ve done has been in this room, it is my best dream and worst nightmare. I love it and I hate it. When I first arrived it was mainly a storage room that had two make shift tables from plywood and sawhorses that took up most of the room. The little bit of the room left was a pile of bags and tools on the ground plus a power washer. The ceiling of this room is magnificent, there is a column in each corner that runs with a white mortar trim in an arch connecting it to each of the other three corners. The spaces in-between the arch are filled with red, brown, and orange bricks (I’m sure they were originally all close to the same color) that are at a minimum 100 years old. Directly above the center point of the room is the intersection of the arches. It conveys both a strong aesthetic and structural purpose. I spent my first week cleaning these with a grinder and a brush attachment. However, if the brick became to dry it would create a lot of particles in the air, so in between brushing I would use the power washer to dampen and clean them. That seems simple enough, but wait there’s more.. Using the power washer created a lot of water on the floor that I would have to scoop out with a bucket and shovel after 2-3 cycles.
The brick has been cleaned and we have destroyed the columns. We are starting on the recessed shelves.
Somewhere along the line my host and the guy who instructs us on what to do came into my room and decided it would be cool if they made some recessed shelves. After breaking through the wall to see the kind of space available, he realized he wanted to break a lot of other stuff in the room.
Breaking-
Say no more Fam, I destroyed 4 pillars, 2 sections in each wall, a shelf that was already recessed that they wanted to go further, and numerous holes to run conduit. The destruction happened like a whirlwind. I stood in this room looking at the chalk outlines designating where my hammer would land its blows. I started with the columns. With my first swings I could not tell if they were solid or hollow, but once I broke through in a small area it started a chain reaction of systematic crumbling. Behind each of the columns were the true column that was supporting the ceiling. They were aged stones and mortar that was nearly dust. Then I took to the walls, they needed to be a bit more precise so I used a chisel to make my outline before I laid waste to the area inside the chalk. By the time I was finished we were all walking nearly 6 inches off the ground because of all the rubble. The breaking that took all of a few hours max, took an entire day to clean. Then came the precision cuts. Obviously I couldn’t leave the walls in such disarray, but cutting brick is tricky business so we had to order a special mask that would allow me to breathe without getting brick dust in my lungs. After the mask arrived I went back to work, but there was another challenge. My room was connected to the hallway that was connected to the kitchen and it was the room that all other rooms in the downstairs ran through before reaching a door, so when it came time to cut the other rooms would get dusted out in order for me to have proper ventilation. Even with the breeze blowing through the room I felt like I was walking in the eye of Jupiter, my vision was obstructed with an orange haze. It took 2 days to make all the cuts with this massive saw that was as big around as me. After the dust settled and we spent hours cleaning it off all the surfaces and floor it became time to build.
Some see safety for brick cutting, I see altitude training.
Building-
The columns I had torn down needed to be rebuilt but with large stones, the recessed shelving needed to be rebuilt and reinforced with concrete, and the walls needed to be covered in drywall. The stone columns, my greatest accomplishment and biggest frustration. I remember the haste with which I built the first two, focused only on trying to remain level and having a flat face. This seems easy enough, but a flat face with round stones is not quite what it seems. Also, in the beginning our stone selection was few and far between. However, we made it work… Until, we must have been halfway through the third column when the host came in and decided she did not like how it looked because she thought an extremely large stone should be at the base of each. So we tore them down…. one by one… stone by stone.. There was a solid week that I dreamt of the perfect stones for each column every night. I would walk the streets observing other stone walls, taking note of the color of the mortar, the thickness of it between the stones, whether there were any patterns or not, what the faces of the stones looked like. So, from scratch I began again, determined. This time my column would have structural stability, heaps of mortar, a dazzling face, and a perfect fit that made any observer think that it had been 3d printed. One day after work we went to a field about 1.5 miles away and it was littered with stones of all sizes, some that are probably more properly called boulders and others that would be idealistic for the most minute of decorations. I wasn’t sure if it was one of my dreams because I walked around hand picking the exact stones that would go in the exact locations of each column. Which stones would be perfect corner pieces and which would be used on the narrow strip of the 3rd column. After days of working on it here and there, finding the perfect mixture of mortar, and losing a few finger tips I was finally finished.
Odds and ends-
Since then I have also measured, cut, fit, and stuck a decent amount of dry wall. We went to an abandoned mansion and “liberated” around 200 brick tiles one by one using the most careful of swings so that they would not crack. I have cleaned hundreds of stones. Cut steel, laid concrete, and cleaned an unrealistic amount because everything is always dirty.
What it looks like now.
