10.30.10

It was a wet and cold weekend to say the least. Rain alternating with snow and temps in the high 30's, welcome to Fall in the Adirondacks! Good thing about snow and rain, a full upper pond. Here is Rex taking a look at it. That was cool!

and here is a look out of the big window in the great room. Not as pretty as that last one with the sunshine and pretty leaves.

I got the task of putting together the new shop vac. and here it is. Once together I got busy getting rid of all the water in the entry way, its nice to not have to step in an inch of water everytime you come in and out!

Meanwhile, Andy and Rex were working on the crane. We bought a small crane that is suppose to be mounted in the back of a pick up truck & we mounted it up on the fourth floor near the window so we could start using that to get bigger loads up instead of having to carry them all up those 60 spiral stairs. Here is Rex at top with crane control and Andy is down at the entrance hooking up the pallet he made to place materials on.

Here is Andy loading some concrete blocks.

So, the crane is a good idea and should have taken a few hours to get in place and working, but we ran into a few issues with regards to the motor not be stabilized at the top and the safety switch kicking on and not letting the crane move. Once Andy figured that out, we were golden, but it took a while and even then, we had to be very careful hoisting things and keeping that motor stable. Andy has a plan and brought the motor home with us and is having a friend fix it so we won't run into those problems again. This ate up a good chunk of our morning and it gets frustrating when you know you only have a limited amount of time there to work and things like this happen, but we all took it in stride and made the best of it.

Along with making the crane pallet, Andy also cut some concrete blocks that he could use to set some window boxes in place on the third and fourth floors. Yes, he even made the window boxes. See:

Once we got all the heavy supplies we needed up on the upper floors, we got to work laying some block, mixing mortar, and putting those window boxes in place. The opening on the turret where we were walking out on is now closed off and the beginning of a window. There is also the
same size window going in right above this one on the fourth floor, so we had to lay the same blocks, mortar, and place another window box there.

Mixing mortar and concrete was a good job as it gets you moving and keeps you warm.
Here is one of the windows in place. You can see we had to put up some tarps to try and keep the rain and snow off the area while we worked.

and that was it, besides cleaning up and getting everything back in order.
Thanks to Patti & Jack for visiting and helping out on Sunday. We even had a trick or treater on Sunday, the porta pottie guy! Thank goodness I had those oreos to give him cause I wouldn't want to see what his trick was!
Happy Halloween and Happy Fall