Porch Piers

How much (many?) concrete block can a husband and wife lay in 2 days? This much. . . not bad for a couple of DIY'ers. We were hoping for "good enough" and I think we did better and got "not too shabby". It is isn't professional quality, but it is level, plumb, and square and there is only 1/4" difference in height between all 4 pillars. As with many projects like this - skills improved during the course of the project.

These are the supports for the front porch. We made them out of block for 2 main reasons:
1 - We are going to cover them with cultured stone or stone veneer. The final shape is acheived right away with block. The alternative was to pour tubes and then build square boxes on the tubes and cover them. To me, too much of a hassle and not as good of a base for the stone.
2- I wanted us to have a hand in each stage of the building process. I did not want to take on the whole foundation, but this was something I thought we could handle.

We hope to backfill today so we had to get the level of this block above grade. There will be either 3 or 9 courses of block above this. It depends on if we want the stone veneer to end below the porch , or continue up to the bottom of the taper in the porch columns. We are leaning towards the latter, but that's for a future weekend.