Happy Fall!

Our friends Shelly and Marc came to help us prepare the castle for it's first fundraising event next weekend. Shell is an artist and took this artistic shot. The two lions kinda look like a rooster, don't they?               

Peak is late this year, this is usually how it loos the first weekend in September and with the weather forecast and lack of rain I think this weekend coming up is going to be near peak and beautiful.

Marc is inspecting the large church window that Brain and the other Mark have moved closer to the place it will be re-erected to serve as the back drop of the chapel.

                                  
these two trees will be beams on each side of the window that will help support roof of chapel.

 
 Chris finished the arch masonry work at end of great hall stairs and is almost finished with the stairs into the fungeon. They are sweet.

we are moving some pieces of furniture in to make it look a little more homey. This is the big church pew we got from our friends Taber & Yona. They were  living in Saratoga, but recently relocated to Seatlle and needed a new home for this piece as it was too big to take cross country, so we adopted it and it goes great here in the Fungeon/game room.

                                                       
Brian and Mark are framing in the overlook area so they can panel it as you can see to the left of this picture.

 

some pieces we pulled out of storage, they may or may not stay where they are currently located, but it is fun to see them finally in the castle.

 This black armoire was a great find and with a little black paint makeover it looks very castley. The inside has all these drawers and the hardware is so cool, it was made for the castle.

This is the great room dining table. It is actually a new piece from restoration hardware

Black toilets have arrived and three were functional by time we left on Sunday, now if we just had doors on the bathrooms! 

 
 Brian and Mark were working hard installing the new black wood floors in the 4th floor, back bedrooms and hallway.

 Andy is showing us where some cool light fixtures he found will go in the 3rd floor landing.
                                                 
 Andy gave Shelly and I the job of taking all the light fixtures he found at Lowe's out of the boxes to assemble

then we spray painted the brown fixtures black.

 and then Shelly rubbed them all with this silver stuff that makes them look like this.

Andy and Mark moved huge dressers from 2nd to 4th floor, they barely fit in the spiral staircase, but they made it work without killing themselves too much.

then the boys moved all the library bookcases into place and attached the doors to the cabinets on the bottom. I was busy re attaching all the hardware to the other pieces we refinished.

                                   

 Andy bought these things awhile back at a hardware supply store and he and Mark came up with a pattern and fancied up the front door!

 The weekend warriors after a hard working weekend and a fun filled Saturday night @ Charlie's Inn in Lake Clear.
 
  Andy came up with this posing and looking in different directions pose

Productive and fun, thanks to Marc and Shelly for coming up and helping out again, thanks to Brain, Mark, & Jerry for working Saturday and Thank you Chris for working Sunday. We all appreciate you hard work and dedication to making this project that much closer to completion. 

Thanks to all for following

all work and no play makes a sad castle day!

The kids got a zip  line for Christmas from Ms. Bev and we haven't had an opportunity to put it up until this weekend. Here are Andy and Poppie (my Dad) putting it up.

 Ruby's friend, Abby, came up and tested it out for the first ride.

Ruby above and Abby below. They came up with a game where you zipped into the tree at the end and then kicked off it and whoever kicked back farthest wins! I did it a few times too, its pretty fun! 

The concrete guys sealed the concrete on the first two levels last week and it was a bit stinky inside, so Andy had Marc and Brian working on the Chapel. This is Nana (my Mom) saying "TaDa" on the Chapel platform.

 
 
 and if you recall awhile back, Andy showed up at the house with this large antique church window on a flatbed truck from an excursion in Ithaca, well this window is going to be raised upright onto the chapel floor to provide a backdrop for possible weddings.

Here is a picture of the Chapel from another angle and Andy's sketch for the Chapel platform

The view is still great on top!  

  Andy has to rent a truck to transport the marble tops for the bathroom vanities because they were too heavy for his trailer. He is working to un fasten them from their secure transport location.

 Here's what they look like.Same top in each bathroom although some are rectangle for the larger bathrooms and some are more of a triangle like this one in the smaller bathrooms. like this

Andy and Rex managed to carry all the counter tops up and get them into place. My job was to follow with a piece of foam in case they had to rest on the way. The foam was to place the Marble on.

It appears Chris had the concrete guys spray the mason stone with the sealer to see what it looked like. We think it looks pretty good and would cut down on dust, so we are thinking we might seal the masonry work on the inside of the castle.

 

 Poppie is an Ex-Fire Chief of Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Dept., so he thought he should be in charge of fire after a few flights up and down of stairs.

                                             Poppie could also be found "screwing around"
                                                 
 Nana almost got all tied up, but she was able to unwind the extension cords and helped clean and reorganize the locked boxes

                                 The front entrance with new infloor heatnig stampcrete with sealer

                   We also got a slack line too at christmas and finally got to put that up in the front lot.

These are our piles of stones and concrete pieces from the concrete we knocked out. Nana and Rex are filling buckets to be carried into the wine cellar and used as filler behind the wine racks.

 Nana thought it would be fun to finish the wine racks in the wine cellar so Sunday morning we did. Nana and Poppie both realized it wasn't all fun and alot of hard work, but it was a nice accomplishment to be able to say they did it I think.

 

 The finished product. The darker red arches are the new ones. The plywood in the center gets removed and then wine bottles go in the arches.

It was a productive weekend and it was fun to have mom and dad being there and helping out, thanks guys, love you!