The Lorence Brother's Construction Company is owned and opperated by Jeff and Walt Lorence (the brothers) with its headquarters in the basement of Jeff's house right off of Canyon Road in Beaverton. I've been working for the Lorence brothers for three days. Walt and Jeff mostly manage at this point and plan projects. Michael and Esteban are the workers and I spend my days with them. My first day, last Friday, we worked on an addition they're building on the back of a little Bungalo in North Portland off of Killingsworth. Yesterday (Monday) and today, we've been working on the basement of a house right off of Vista in the West Hills. Here's the house:

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Yesterday we cleaned out the basement floor, prepped the room (i.e. trim, floor, etc.) for concrete, carried 50 lb. bags of concrete down the hill, mixed concrete and poured it. A very expensive very heavy stove also needed to be carried down the steep, muddy hill, through a hedge, and on to the back porch. We did this as well. The Lorence Brothers have been working on this house for nearly a year. It is a four floor house and they remodeled the floor above the basement as well. Today the job was to creat a ventilation system and mount for an air conditioning unit that will be used to cool the meat-treating (or salting) room in the new basement. So Michael and I spent most of the morning drilling, chiseling and hammering at a brick and concrete wall in order to create a 7"x10" hole that exhaust could be released through. This was difficult. Meanwhile, Esteban, the more skilled and experienced (and highly paid for that matter) carpenter, built a shelf and brackets for support on which the unsightly metal box will sit.

Michael went to Central Catholic for High School, then PCC for a couple years, then OSU. As he's told me, he had, "too much fun" at OSU, so now he works full-time for the Lorence Brothers and works on his own house, which we'll be working on and he'll be moving into this week. Jeff Lorence is Michael's step-dad and so Michael has been working for the Lorence Brothers off and on since he was fourteen. He's 22.

Esteban remains somewhat more of a mystery to me. He's a short, small Mexican man, but he is by far stronger than me (much to my chagrin, as I outweigh him by 40 pounds I'm sure). He's told me he's 32 and has been doing construction for seven years. Michael told me, "Esteban is one of the most talented and knowledgable guys you'll ever meet in construction. It's a privlege to work with him." According to Michael, his formal education ended with the third grade in Mexico.

So far I haven't made any expensive mistakes or gotten in anyone's way too badly. I like the work mostly, but it's hard and tiring.

Stay tuned.