Crane

On Saturday, we got to witness something pretty cool...something that Brian has been pretty stressed out about actually. In fact, I don't know that I have ever seen him so worried or nervous about anything, work related or not.

This is the deal - He is (through his company) in charge of this remodel project - and it calls for a private staircase between the 15th and 16th floors. Options: Take the steel up in the elevator, in "bite size" pieces, and weld it all together. Or, "fly" it in through the window with a crane.

Oddly enough (to me anyway), it was thirteen thousand + dollars cheaper to fly it in with a crane. So in the interest of making good profit, giving a good price, and adding years to his life in stress, he went with the crane option.

Very cool. Very rare (esp for a sleepy little down town like ours), and very scary.

Here are a few pics and videos! I took the kids down to witness this "once in a lifetime". They were impressed for all of 5 mins. Then they were bored, and hungry, etc etc etc. Haha. Someday, they'll get to tell their kids they saw this, and their Daddy did it!

By "did it" I mean, he organized everything, worried about it, and was responsible if anything went wrong. Other than that, he didn't "do" anything, HAHA. No Spiderman-like repelling for him!

Crane! When we arrived around 8:30am (Brian had been there since 6:30), "Spiderman" was cutting the caulk off the first window.

These windows have been in place for 25 years, and so it was difficult to get them out. It took almost an hour to get the first window out, and about 30ish minutes for the second one.

Each pane of glass weighs 312lbs. !!!!. If you look close at the "hole" here, Brian is in the white hard hat and the light blue shirt, in the corner peeking out the window. He was not tethered, and helping get the window in.Talk about FREAK ME OUT! He waved to us.

They removed 2 panes, the one they needed (15th storey), and one above it, in case that heavy ball thing on the crane should "bounce" once the load was released

 

Behind the scenes from Brian's phone: Here is Spiderman, cutting away the caulk on the outside of the glass.

From Brian's phone: a view from behind the caution tape

Waiting for the 2nd window to come out, we took a little walk around the block (to help with the boredom factors). Here's a  a statue, complete with rebel flag at the base to "Our Confederate Dead".

Here's a few minutes of video and few moments with the man of the hour:-) I was watching this with the building's engineer, and a few coworkers of Brian's. Everybody had to come take a little look-see at this rare event! The crane went up I think 6 or 7 times. Each time took about 5 minutes.