Construction In Progress, Part I

A friend of a friend is building an apartment building.  Well, in Cairo, I sometimes think that everyone is building an apartment building.  We see the partially complete structures anywhere we go.  We decided to go take a look.  The building is about half way between our place and the great pyramids of Giza.  There are plenty of buildings going up in the area.


I am always amazed at what a small number of Egyptians can do with a concrete mixer, some sand and a few loads of bricks.

Here is the front of the building.  We walked up the stairs to the seventh floor to look at one apartment nearing completion and paused along the way to rest and take pictures.


Linda kept telling me not to lean on the walls.

This is a good chance to show you the electrical "rough-in."  Flexible orange conduit is placed in the floor and walls to distribute the electricity.  Here you can see the conduits emerging from the circuit breaker panel and running across the floor.  Later, a couple of inches of concrete will cover the floor, level it and cover the conduit.


Channels are cut in the bricks to allow the conduit to run vertically and horizontally along the walls.  A layer of stucco or mortar mix will be applied over the bricks to form the interior wall surfaces.


The seventh floor unit is almost complete.  The walls are ready for painting, the plaster crown molding is in place and the ceramic tile has been laid over the top of that concrete that I mentioned earlier.