Laboring on Labor Day

So Rex, Andy, & I were at the castle all Labor Day weekend. Andy took the weekend term literally and said we'd be working very long, hard days, so Ruby opted to stay home with the cousins & go to the town carnival.
So we started off with an inspection of the newly poured concrete roof.

Here's the boys inspecting it up and down.

Heres a close up to try and capture the texture. it's a bit rough and very medievil. This will be the same concrete and texture of all the floors on the inside of the castle.

This is a pic looking down into the turret roof which was also poured with the concrete and same texture.

and I as said in the last blog, last weekend the boys stayed and the two of them hung all the brackets on the external wall, here's a picture of them. It is pretty incredible that the two of them could do this, but Andy spends alot of time when he is not at the castle planning and figuring out how to do these sorts of things so when we get to the castle we are very efficient. If he wasn't such a great Architect I would say he could be a great project manager, but I guess that is what makes him so great at it all.

Of course, we had to take a walk to the new lower pnd to see how much it filled in after Irene. Here's the boys inspecting that.

and here is Tosh inspecting the depth of the pond.

Yup, we moved the scaffolding again. This time we set it up outside in preparation for Andy to cut the big new window in the great room. Unfortunately, we ran into a problem with that as the concrete chain saw wouldn't start, so we ended up just taking it down after two days and resetting it up inside the great room. Gotta say, we are pretty good at setting up scaffolding now.

I got a pair of big scissors and was given the task of cutting down all the black waterproofing material so it was at grade level. sounds easy enough, but it was this hard plastic stuff with a cloth material on the other side, so you had to get the scissors just right. I felt like a hair sylist giving the castle a trim. I ended up with 3 blisters and a sore back!

This is a sample of the stucco colors for the exterior of the castle. It looks like we have three shades of grey. The stucco guys actually started this week and should be done in a week or two depending on the weather.

Our very close friend, Ms. Bev surprised us with a visit on Saturday. She said she just woke up and decided to come see the castle. here she is getting her tour of the property.

and her dog Max came to play with Tosh. here they are running on the trail around the property that is now done.

These are the crates that use to have piles of sand in them.Last year when we started the clean up of the castle we found buckets of sand everywhere that Edward was using for the concrete. Andy wanted it all in one place, so we got these crates and carried sand from every floor up to the fourth floor and put it here. Today, Andy had Ms. Bev and I take the last of the sand and we carried it to various floors and filled in concrete holes in window openings.

These were the last five pails of sand that we used up. I have carried that sand in these buckets far too much up and down and all around and I am glad for it to now be inside the walls where I don't have to see it again!

The red cement mixer in the back of this photo was here when we bought the property. Rex, Andy, and I carried it to the 4th floor and used it once or twice before it broke. We got a new one and Rex was given the task of putting it together. This is before.

and here it is done. he did it all himself, no questions asked.

Andy is getting the harness on here as he is going up high on the ladders today.

Here he is climbing up the back face of the castle to tighten in the brackets from the outside. About 2-3 inches of the brackets he and Rex hung last week come out through the exterior of the wall, it will be covered by the stucco, so that is why it was a priority to get the external wall brackets in place and get them tighten before the stucco guys started.

Andy had to go a little higher as he moved down the back face of the castle wall towards the other side.

I was inside hammer drilled this old vent Edward had put in out so we could put our new kitchen fan vent in. This is a picture of the vent gone and the opening.

Patti, Chris, and jack came with Lunch on Sunday and Patti brought us a new table cloth for the picnic table. Were getting relly classy here now.

We took a walk to the lower Pond as the Gallaghers had not seen it. Here's a picture of it as we are walking down. Love this picture.

and Patti inspecting the pond.

Once back at the castle we went to show off the new roof, but we lost Andy on the way as the Mason, Micahel Stender, stopped by to show Andy the stone samples he is going to mix in with our stone to complete the turret. He is ready to get going on that as soon as the stucco guys are done.

Rex and Jack enjoying the new roof.

Patti enjoying the new roof with a gentle breeze blowing through her hair. It is totally awesome up on the roof!

Jack felt like he was flying!

Andy working on placing some other blocking in place on the backside of the castle. This will be a little balcony that extends off the great room window above. Again, the blocks had to go in place before the stucco got sprayed.

Look closely, ndy is napping on the ladder. Working on the blocking for the window balcony/seat thingy. It's got a name and Andy told me what it was, but I forgot and he is at a meeting, so just go with that.

and here is Andy puting the blocks in place for the balcony/window seat area that goes around the side to the front window.

I fug most of this with Rex and Andy jumped in for the photo op. We had to dig around the turret and place blocks in place for waterproofing and footing.

and then once in place, we filled back in the dirt.

Monday was mostly a clean up day, moving the scaffolding, and measuring up, so I didn't get any pictures. Trust me, we were busy.

Anyways, Rex and Andy are headed back tomorrow for more. Ruby & I are home for her first soccer game.

It's on schedule and coming along.