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.