Furniture & Finishings 12.4.10

So just because we are not at the castle, it doesn't mean we aren't doing stuff for the castle. It goes without saying to anyone who knows Andy that every night after dinner he sits down with the construction documents of his laptop and he is designing or figuring out something about the castle. While most of that is in his head and we just get at it when he is ready to share, we have got to see some of the things he is thinking of through his many purchases. He drives alot from customer meeting to customer meeting and if an antique store is on the way, he won't pass it. Here are just a few of things we have lying around in his library area of the house.

Pillows, tie backs, and tapestries for the beds.

knight lights, knight figures, medevil boxes and salad tossers.

a stack of swords behind a chair, yeah, they are real!

Steins, canteens, bottles

new 12 foot table from restoration hardware delivered today. its a new, old unfinished wood table. the first picture is the pedestals, the tabletop is still in the box.

ah, my mantle I usually decorate for christmas, not this year, Andy has four chairs in front of it with various castle stuff all over them. I hung the stockings over two of them in an attempt to bring a little christmas to the room.

Tosh thinks this little couch is his, but it will soon go into storage for the castle.

So along with the small stuff we still have at the house above, we also had a garage full of furniture for the bedrooms that Andy was collecting all summer/fall at local antique and junk shops. He rented a truck and took them to matteos shop to get refinished in a medevil way. We went this weekend to pick them up and bring them to the storage unit

This is part of the library walls. Matteo is pointing at some of the unfinished pieces and the other one is finished.

Pretty as a picture. This is one of the mirror frames for a bedroom.

Side tables & dressers all finished and ready to go.

This is the kitchen pieces that Andy brought over a few weeks ago to the storage unit.

this is the storage unti full with kitchen and bedroom pieces. Have to rent unit next door to it for the rest of the stuff.

I know anyone who has been to the castle is struggling with how we are going to get all this stuff up to the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th floors with just a small spral staircase in place, but not to worry, Andy has it under control & we'll let you know when we move it in if you want to see how it is done.

Until next time....

Sherie

Thanksgiving Weekend 11.27.10

We spent Thanksgiving Day @ the house, cooking, watching the parade, and preparing for a fabulous feast with our family. Here's Dad cutting the turkey & the rest of the family getting ready to dig.

3 hours later we were packed and on the road again headed to the castle for the weekend.

Friday morning turned out to be alot nicer than predicted. Forecast said low 30's & freezing rain, we got mid 30's & sunshine, so we were good to go. Andy & the kids continued on the fort while I continued to clear the land. Andy decided the metal radio towers he had up last time for the fort were not Medievil enough, so he took those down and decided to use more of the big cedars we had. No roof in first picture, raising roof in second picture.

Here Andy & Rex build the walls. these will have cedars around them too, but we have to bring home the logs and split them and then bring them back and put them on.

My Friend Patti stopped by after work and helped us with some possiblr xmas card shots. Here's a few of the kids that we are not using. It was near the end of the day, hence the sun setting in the background and we were getting cold, so it was a quick photo shoot!

Here is some of the area I have been working on clearing. First picture is Friday and second picture is Saturday! I waited until the snow and wind died down cause it was a white out Saturday morning and you wouldn't have been able to see anything.

Trees were snow covered and here is the upper pond with a pretty thick layer of ice on it snow covered too.

We dragged over the big pile of cedars that were near the castle, cut before we bought the property, over to the fort and Andy & the kids started using them to secure the fort

Saturday Night we went back to castle to do some light checks with some exterior lights Andy might use. It was a dark and cold evening.........

Sunday we helped Andy do some measuring, he was up there doing a bunch of measurements for a few hours before we got there. Here He and Rex are on the scaffolding while Ruby records the numbers on the plans.

After we cleaned up, we called it a short day and decided to take the long way home through Old Forge and do some shopping.

Here's to a Happy Holiday season! I guess I probably should have lit the little tree to make it a bit more dramatic, but again, it was cold and I was doing everything fast to get out of there!

Veterns Day Weekend 11.13.10

So we arrived to an Upper pond that stayed full and actually froze over. Might be some skating this winter. The kids informed me that it was frozen pretty good because they had walked acrossed it without falling in. I, being the good mother I am told them how dangerous that was as it was about 3-5 feet deep. they laughed and informed me it was 13-15 feet deep. Guess I should pay better attention to what the kids are doing and all those numbers Andy is always throwing around. I bet if they did fall in they wouldn't do it again, OK, they probably would, kids will be kids.

Rex was feeling alittle out of place last time we were @ the castle because he didn't feel he had the appropriate "Tupper Wear". He said he felt "like an ice cream cone in a coffee shop" when he walked into the store with his down winter coat on & all the other men had their Carharts on, so wanting to help him fit in, we got him some Carharts and now he is a Mini Me of his father!

So, back to building an Adirondack Castle. Andy decided the first day of this trip we were going to work on a fort/tree house for the kids. He, Rex, & Ruby did alot of prep work back home to save time once we were on site. Andy's thought is that the kids have been great troopers trudging up to the castle every free weekend and working their butts off, so he wanted to do something just for them and also thought it was something they could retreat to when they wanted to play a little. So they picked a spot across from the castle on a hill overlooking what will be the moat. We first had to cut a small trail from the driveway into the spot to get the lumber and prefabbed pieces in.

This is the floor base before we got the concrete pillars set and poured, but it helps you understand the location better, you can faintly see the castle roof in the background if you look close in the upper left of the picture.

Here is the work crew putting all the boards into place. You can't see it here, but they put formwork in at each corner and we mixed and poured concrete into those.

This is Rex with one of the four radio towers we found on the property. Not sure what Edward was going to do with them, but Andy is trying to re use everything we find, so these helped drive the design of the fort.

here are three of the towers in place. Rex is going to use the fourth one for an airsoft barricade somewhere on the property.

Here Rex is using the fun firework tool to smooth off the edges of the metal towers.

So, that is as far as we got on the fort. The plan is to build wooden walls with some of the piles of larger wood on the property and make a small walk around about 6 feet up on the towers. Of course there will be small holes in the walls for firing airsoft guns and bow and arrows!

While Andy & the kids worked on the fort, I continued to clear brush and clean up the area around the moat. The picture above was what I saw as I was dragging the tree limbs to the fire and it was so pretty, I stopped to take a picture.

here I am in the brush and with my favorite tool, the Cloppers! So, I think they are really called loppers, but I call them cloppers cause they are like big clippers. I realized after I did a bunch of work that you can't really tell how much I did cause I wasn't taking before pictures, so from now on, I am going to do before and after pictures so you can see the difference in the property when I get crazed cleaning it.

Happy 9 months Tosh! He loves it up here 7 he totally crashes when the day is done after all his running around.

Look at this cute Adirondack kids.

Ruby did alittle wandering and exploring with the camera, I won't show you the 200 pictures she took, some of them were pretty good, but I will spare you for now. This is a picture of a tree she claimed. she climbed about 15 feet up it, she named it, binoculars, and she made a plaque for it, so be sure to look for it if you come and visit. I'll give you a hint, it is near the fort!

The kids found the new crane to be a nice place to sit and swing in between the loads going up to the fourth floor. They haven't tried to ride all the way to the fourth floor, but I am keeping my eyes open for that one!

We mixed lots more morter and concrete! We used the concrete mixer for one bag, but then we broke it, so back to mixing by hand. It is a good upper body work out. We continued to fill in the windows on the third and fourth floors that we started last visit.

Hereis Andy doing some measuring after he just filled the concrete blocks on the left with concrete.

and here you can see the two windows from the outside that we created from what use to be floor to ceiling openings. The third floor window has all that support formwork to hold the flat formwork we laid to create an overhang where a castle detail will be made, you'll see!

Onward to cutting windows! Andy got 5 windows cut this trip, yeah, I think he finally got the knack of the concrete saw. Of course, everythime he cut a window, Rex & I had to set up and breakdown the scaffolding for him. Here is Rex checking the scaffolding before Andy gets up there to cut the window. If you look close in the picture you can see the cuts in the concrete where the window will be.

That's the end of the work pictures. The other things we did that we didn't take pictures for:

1. Andy marked out the lower pond and reviewed it with Uncle Frank who will dig it next spring

2. Rex & I followed Andy's markings for the lower pond and cut a trail around the whole thing.

3. Paul, our friend and surveyor, came up with some of his family and did some surveying. He hadn't been there since before we bought the property and he said we'd done alot, love to hear that!

I think that's it, Andy said we did good and got everything done on his list.

The 50 degree weather and sunshine defintiely helped, getting dark @ 5pm did not.

So now we rest from castle work until next weekend!