Foundation - Block Wall

Last week I was happy to get the footer poured before the rainy weekend.  But the rain did take a toll on the project.  I probably spent 8 hours pumping out and cleaning up the foundation trench due to the rain.  I suppose could have figured out how to cover the entire area with plastic...but even so, there has been water filtering in through the sides into the deeper parts of the trench.  I don't know a good way to stop that.

In any case, this weekend I started laying the block.  When I checked the levels of the poured footer it varied by as much as an inch.  I'm sure a pro would have done better, but it wasn't too bad to work with.

Here's the first course on one of the 35' sides:

Generally, I'm getting about 25 blocks to an 80# bag of mortar.  I'm mixing the mortar by hand and that isn't a problem given the speed I'm working at (slow).

Here's a overall shot of the work site at this point:

And I'll wrap up with a link to a video of a guy laying block. Now that I'm about half way through laying block on the garage, watching a video like this just makes me smile in amazement for the efficiency of this guy's motions.



Oh, wait, one more photo that I didn't get a chance to add last week.  Super cute!