Making the Concrete Posts and Beams

The guy in the red shirt is my friend the carpenter who is fondly called Bagyan. Notice the green house behind him, that is actually the 3rd floor of our neighbor's house already. The boy in green shirt is Jonathan, another neighbor. The only division that separates us from our next door neighbors is the foot path in between the houses. The height from the ground floor up to Bagyan's feet is 13 feet high. This used to be the level of the roof in the old house. This is now the main floor level of the second floor.

The heat of the sun beating down on the workers. We had to put up some blue tarps to provide some shade from the burning sun. The temperature that month in October was unusually high considering that it was still the months of the rainy season.  

The guy in the yellow sleeveless shirt below is called Johnny, one of Bagyan's boys and is also a neighbor.

This guy below is called Lito, another neighbor and one of Bagyan's boys. He was bending some rebar in this picture that would go into the tie beams.

The guy in the picture below is called Pedring, another neighbor and is one of Bagyan's boys. He is also the first cousin of Bagyan's wife. He's working on one of the post in this picture.

This guy below is Johnny, another member of the crew. this was taken during their lunch break.

Most of Bagyan's crew were boys from our neighborhood. These were the the initial crew members who worked with Bagyan during the first phase of the work. It was more difficult working with a complete house renovation than erecting a house on a clear spot. This is because they had to tear down the old house manually which made it more expensive as far as labor cost is concerned. However, I have made it a point to provide the workers their mid morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack. After all, they were doing the hard dirty work for me and they were working their butts off with Bagyan barking the orders to everyone. Sometimes I think that Bagyan drives them nuts but that's how Bagyan works really, no wasted time lost with him.