The Snow is here, but it can't stop us!

Rex, Andy & I were up@ the castle last weekend. Ruby opted to stay with the neighbors at home as the forecast called for cold and snow and as you can see here, we did get snow , but it only stuck on the higher elevations and all our work was inside anyways, so we carried on.

Here are some pics of Andy and Rex knight fighting. These were actually from the end of our first day, but I thought I would share them first. They both created their weapons out of scrap insulation and duct tape, it was quite a battle.

Rex said he won, Andy said he won.

all I can say is that they had fun.

and were very dramatic!

Thought this picture of the windows all insulated up was pretty cool at sunset with the light coming through.

as I was cleaning up around the outside of the castle I saw a new addition to the back door insulation.

While Rex and Andy were off getting materials at the hardware store I was given the task of insulating the back of the front door, here is my finished product of blue insulation and gaps and cracks! a work of art.

Our goal of this weekend was gtting all the steel beams in place so we could cut the interior concrete openings. Here Andy and Rex are finishing up securing a beam we started earlier in the summer.

Rex decided to take a break in the old, broken cement mixer, he thinks it would be a cool swivel chair.

The weekend before, the boys had brought up several metal beams in the big truck and left them in the entrance.

This weekend we had to get them to the first floor with just the three of us. We hooked up a piece of wood to serve as a handle to help. Andy & I pulled, Rex pushed, Tosh just got in the way.

The astatement of the weekend, "These beams didn't look that heavy on paper when I was specing them". Trust me, they were heavy.

Rex felt they made a nice break bed.

Once we had them up on the first floor, we put them on furniture carts and pushed them easily to where they needed to go.

Andy was atop the 20 feet scaffolding repositioning "the truck" this is a portable crane that we move from roof beam to roof beam to lift heavy objects.

Here Andy and Rex are building a wood brace to put in the center of the beam once we got it up in place so that it wouldn't fall out.

Her I caught Andy and Rex in the thinking pose when they came upon a dilemna and were trying to figure it out. We had just watched an old Tosh.O and he had a skit on about the football player who did this everytime he got a touchdown. Might have been funnier right after we saw the skit.

This was the next beam we tackled. It went on the inside of the curent kitchen wall. We used what Andy called the Egytian technique to get this one into place. we lifted it up on one end and put a cider block under it then we lifted the other end and did the same. we kept going back and forth until there were 12 cinder blocks on each end and the beam was 8 feet high and in place where we could bolt it into the cement wall.

Next beam was on the other side of the kitchen wall in the great room. This one will attach right in to the one in the kitchen and then we will knock out the wall and open the kitchen right into the great room.

As Andy was able to hook up the truck in the great room,we were able to just hook this beam in and hopefully raise it into place. Here the boys are hooking it in.

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and then we raised it up and moved the scaffolding over so Rex could try and attach it onto the bolts from the other side. I say try, cause it wasn't that easy. There was about 2 hours of moving it alittle here and alittle there until we finally got it into place.

So here are the two beams that will support the ceiling between the kitchenm and the great room once we bust through that wall, all in place after alot of work!

This was the third beam we got into place, this one was relatively easy compared to the others. we used the truck crane as it was in the great room then we secured 2 beams to the walls and then attached them all. this is currently a free standing beam, but it will be the support for two levels of bathrooms above it.

I guess the other exciting news was that we were contacted on Thursday before we went up this past weekend by a freelance writer who came across the blog. She wanted to write about us, so she came up and spent a day with us and pitched it to the new York Times and they said yes to her story. So the next day they sent up a photographer who spent a half day with us. The story is crrently being edited at the Times and may run before next week, I will keep you posted!

Happy Thanksgiving, we are off to our first vacation in 2 years. Legoland here we come!