Pierced navel? Thursday, July 30, 2009

For the past couple of weeks, workers have been refurbishing the brickwork on the apartment building across the street from mine. The 5-story, 1931 building is covered with brick on the two sides visible from the street, and decorated with about eight 10-foot tall sculptures I call the "pharaohs." (You might remember that I wrote about them last fall.)

The brickwork looked fine to my untrained eye, but apparently it needed a lot of work. After setting up a working platform, they started by pressure washing the brick and the pharaohs. I thought they were tarnished white, but it turns out they're more a yellowish-brown sandstone. They then started re-mortaring sections of the brick.

Today they drilled four holes into each pharaoh (one of which looks like a bellybutton). They injected resin and set a threaded bolt into the holes. I'm curious to see what's next.

I don't envy the workers, though, having to stand in the sun next to a brick wall all day in record-breaking heat.