More finds take their place

The HUGE lions we found in Saratoga at the beginning of the summer have taken their temporary place at the castle. Andy & Rex drove a big rental truck to Saratoga last weekend to pick up the two lions and the fountain we had bought. The lions are atleast 4 feet tall and solid concrete, Andy says they weigh about 1000 lbs., he does tend to exaggerate at times, but Rex agrees they are very heavy having had to get them on the truck with just him and Andy. Luckily Brian, Marc, Chris, & Jack were there to help unload.

They currently are atop the small hill in front of the castle

The fountain made it safe and is waiting for its placement to the right of the front door.

Chris is making great progress with the stone on the turret. He is getting up there and it is a lot more work getting up and down the scaffolding with these stones. he brings Jack whenever he can and says things go a lot faster with his help. 

Jerry the plumber has been busy laying the plumbing tubes out. 

As he has been installing the tubes, Marc has been framing them in where needed.

 This is one of the bathrooms on the newly created floor above the great room. It is amazing how exciting it is just to see some colored tubes going in.

This is a template Andy drew of a dragon head that we are carving into the end of some of the beams.

 Rex and Jack got some carving instructions from Andy, were handed their tools,  and they were off chiseling. they did really well for 14 yr. old boys!

I was given the task of painting in the carvings. Sounds easy enough, but I did not have the right tools and it took a while, but it was fun. Here is one of the dragon heads I painted. This one was already in place, so I was up high on a ladder.

                                     
Andy & Rex also worked on building a form work at the base of the great room stairs. Mr. Leary did some quirky things with these stairs.

 We plan to correct the stairs by enclosing this small triangle area and leveling  it out with the stairs and have a knight in Armour displayed here.Then we have to extend the stairs on each end so they go all the way to the wall, as they don't currently.

This is a sketch of the stairs coming into the great room. Andy finally decided he was going to put a glass window above the door as it looks here. My shower is on the other side of that window, how cool is that! 

of course we cleaned more and loaded the rental truck up with alot of garbage. The boys are headed back up this weekend to work more on the stair case area. Stay tuned.

and the walls come crumbling down..

Moore's Flatwork and Foundation has been busy cutting the concrete for the interior cuts Andy wanted. Here is the tool room cut which now opens into the Fungeon. Marc and Brian needed a good work out, so they took to knocking the rest of the block out for us and here it is:

Andy is standing in the fungeon and Tosh is looking down at him from what is now the tool room

Here I am in the Fungeon looking back up at the boys. The tool room will be where the pool table is. It is amazing how much this cut opens up the space and makes it feel even bigger. Andy is very excited about it. Thank you to Brian and Marc for cleaning out all the concrete block too cause Andy planned on us doing that this past weekend.

Here is the other big interior cut. I am standing in the great room looking into what will be the kitchen. This use to just be a doorway and wall, now it is open to great room again making it appear even bigger and making the flow much nicer.

Chris is hard at work with the stone work, he is about half way up the turret and it is looking good. He is paying close attention to each stone as he puts it in place. He says he has a fish swimming, an angry bird, and a pac man eating the dot so far in the design. That'll keep the kids busy looking for those!

The kids stayed back with Nana and Poppie this past weekend, so it was just Andy & I up. We did alot of cleaning. Now that the holes are cut, most of the dusty, dirty work inside is done, so we are working to get everything vacuumed/swept and de-dusted. It is pretty spotless for a castle under construction. 

Our neighbor had a block party and we got to hear more stories about Edward and the castle before it was ours, it was a nice time and there are some good stories.

Stayed tuned.

and work continues

We were up at the castle a few weeks ago. Mark and Brian and Uncle Frank are still plugging along doing things while we are not there, so it was exciting to see what they had done since our last trip.

The scaffolding is there are the guys were building a roof over the window as it was leaking without it there. They did the same and built a little roof on the window on the otherside also.

This pile of concrete outside is from an opening they cut inside. Below you can see there is a door opening to great room walkway. The concrete cutters are coming back this week to cut the other openings in the kitchen and in the game room, it will be exciting to have all that dirty work done and over with.

The windows are all getting framed out as you can see here.

We moved the big chalice to a rock on Rex's ridge along side the back corner of the castle. Uncle Frank easily moved it with his front loader and Rex and Andy cemented it onto the rock.

The boys put up the other side of the arch above the door. It went up alot smoother this time having had the experience of the other side already. Again, they lifted it upright, slide it along a wood guide post on the wall and cranked it up with a farm crank and bolted it into place, easy peasey.

 Jack and Chris were helping, as you can see.

 Almost there.

While the boys were doing all the hard work. Ruby & I swept and vacuumed the 3rd and 4th floors and then we swept all the spiral stairs, let's try and keep it clean people! 

The plumber/Heater, Jerry Fobare, is starting this week to do his stuff. Concrete cutters will hopefully be finished in a week or two. Chris was over a third of the way up the turret with the stone work.

The boys are headed up this weekend for an air soft tournament with a bunch of Rex's friends, will be fun for them to just play and enjoy the property and not have to work.

Moving in alittle bit...

We loaded up this Ryder truck with some of the big furniture from the storage unit and brought it up to the castle to store. This was full of vanities, armoires, and all the four poster beds and various other smaller pieces.

My Mom and Dad came with us to help. Here is my Dad supervising Andy. 

Brian and Mark took a break from construction and helped unload.

                                                     
Look at how happy Mark is to be lifting these big pieces. There carried everything up to the first floor great hall, not an easy task and there was some heavy grunting going on.

I was trying to show you that the great room was full of furniture here, but not a very good picture of that. You can see the pieces of the beds stacked here though.

Here you can see us craning the posters of the bed up from the great room to the fourth floor. 

We figured out if we had a guide rope on it, it was easier to manipulate the posters to get it through the hole.

We had the headboards going up too. My Dad and Chris on the ground. 

 Andy, Rex, and Jack up top getting the pieces.

and viola, here you can see all the pieces are out of the great room as we still need to lay in floor tubing for heating there.

Here's some of the library pieces in their home in the library. 

The permanent front door with knocker on it.

The permanent back door with the Corona's glass window from the outside.

and the back door from the inside with the Corona window.

patti's husband, Chris Gallagher, has taken over the masonary wrk, look how great it looks.

 He is doing a great job mixing in rocks Ed had there, with new ones we bought, even some he brought from his home on Whiteface Mountain!

Another window is in here. this is just temporary to see if they fit, we'll take them out and get them framed better now we know it fits.

 I think this is the Seaman/Prichett window.

and the Pirro Window went in too! 

My Mom was on her hands and knees cleaning the place and monitoring me to make sure I didn't do too much. I probably did overdo it the first day, so I didn't do anything the next day. It's amazing when you are on your fifth chemo treatment and your anemic and your white blood cell count is down, how tired you get just walking to the roof and back. It isn't amazing, actually it sucks and it made me cry, but I will be running up and down those stairs soon with no problems, guarantee it! 

Got alot done. The concrete guys are there this week cutting the big openings between the kitchen and great room, the wine cellar and fungeon, and making a hallway to the fourth floor bedrooms, can''t wait to see that done, but it'll be another mess to clean when they are done. 

I can honestly say, even this early on, I know why there were servants for this cleaning business, anyone want a job?