Dear friends,
I hope to keep up better with the blog as we are starting to get close to the really exciting part--the finish! Lots of things are happening in a simultaneous frenzy, so this will feel a bit like a laundry list. The first photo shows the handsome attic vent Joe built. The second image shows the school house fixtures and globes
my Mom and Wes sent us--we love
them! They are from a 100+ year old
school in Bangor, Maine and we are
so happy they have a new
home in
Jonesboro. The third photo is of
our primed shingles--right now it is
all shingles all the time for me. My
neck and back hurt and my hand is
bruised from the handle of the paintbrush
pressing against it. I have been doing this
monotonous task while Joe and his dad have
been installing windows (which is pure
torture). We ordered the sashes and tracks
they lock into (rather than order an entire
window in it's casing)--but of course,
the angle of the bottom plates didn't
match the angle of the tracks, and
many of the windows are out of square.
So instead of putting them in in a jiff,
they had to do surgery to the house to square the casing up. While this was happening I wondered if this is what it's sometimes like being a surgeon? Opening someone up and then finding a COMPLETELY different problem to deal with. It made me feel better to think of it in these terms because we are just dealing with windows. I'll post photos of them in another
blog entry. The fourth photo is of one of our
cleaned original hinges with probably six layers
of paint removed. We have lots
of door hardware yet to strip.
The last photo is of a part of the entryway paneling. The little strips of trim that have curves in them were impossible to scrape paint from without damaging the wood, so I bought trim as close to the original as I could find and am installing it throughout the entryway. Before signing off tonight I want to thanks our wonderful, thoughtful friends John, Missy and Joe who came by on Saturday to take part in the shingle-painting detail. And really, thinking back a bit further, I need to thank everyone who has helped us get this far: Joe's Dad and Mom, sister Denise and her husband Barry, nephews Ryan and Logan, and niece McKenzie and nephew-in-law Jake who have all been in the trenches at some
point or another with us during demo or when
something incredibly heavy needed to
be lifted--like say, a boiler in the
basement. I will not blame any of
them if they have put our cell
numbers on an alternate ring tone
so they know when not to answer.
Thanks one and all!
Just a quick update:
salvaging them in the state they were in was going to be a whole lot of work with no payoff . . . however, we kept the casing and just ordered new sashes and the tracks they slide in. We are recycling the old window weights. The old sashes will be used as stationary windows in the garage that will become a studio. When we have time to scrape and paint them they will be installed around the top of the garage walls near the ceiling to provide light while maintaining lots of usable wall space. That's all for now!
