I love this picture of the library arch, shot from high up on a scaffold in January 2013. The frame for the bond beam was still in place over the arch, but our builder had already closed in the gable and part of the north and south walls. We were still working on the east and north walls of the house, so we had lots of bricks stockpiled.
While all the bond-beam pouring and drying-in were going on, Charles and I waited long and anxiously for a phone call from a limestone quarry in Leuters, Texas. Our window sills were sawn and hewn there. The forklift driver was able to load our first shipment directly into Charles’s pickup, which groaned just a little under the weight.
Not long after that, Charles and I visited the house site and experienced another wonderful moment in our house-building adventure: our windows were installed!
The gray stuff underneath the windows is lead. It will protect the earthen wall from any water that might seep in under or around the windows. Our first experience with lead was when we lived in England. People used lead sheeting to cover the tops of bay windows. They used mallets to bang it into shape.
When the lead was delivered, my dad unloaded the heavy pallet with his tractor and brought it to the building site. The next day, I looked all around for it. I knew it weighed hundreds of pounds, so I imagined a large roll of metal. It was nowhere to be found!
Then Rachel, who was building walls with me, said, “There’s a new pallet over by the trees.” It was the one. The lead rolls were no more than 8″ in diameter. I later lifted the leftover lead (by that time about 4″ in diameter and 24″ wide). It was very heavy. You knew that. I knew it too, intellectually, but the physical reality was a shock.
You can see the limestone window sills in this picture taken from the inside. The sills are on top of the lead, and the window frame is on top of the inside sill. Callon and crew added outside sills later.