We get the Neighbor's working

So our neighbors and good friends from home, The Glowacki Family came to work at the castle this weekend. We started out the trip the way we always do, stopping at Longways Truck Stop Diner for Dinner in Watertown on the way up. It was so busy we had to sit at the counter. If you have never sat at the counter of a busy diner, you should, it is quite an experience.

While it rained the whole drive up on Friday evening, it started clearing up on Saturday. Of course Andy was at the castle working by 6:30am, preparing for us, but when we got there, we had to take pictures, take a tour, and walk the property.

DAY ONE:

that's Parker in the upper window and Phoebe in the lower one.

Then there is Michael, Helen, and Hope in these three windows.

and the whole Glowacki Family, plus Ruby on the lift. They were going for a Brady Bunch feeling.

The colors just came out this week. They were gorgeous from the roof!

Hiking up the big hill in search of the big rock.

and there it is with Phoebe and Ruby on it! Worth the trek every time.

all the kids made it up on top.

enough fun, back at the castle Andy is handing out jobs from his list.

It's an important to do list for the weekend written on a torn off piece of cardboard!

1. Move bricks from kitchen to final destination at the fireplace site.

Helen lifted this big beam all by herself!

2. Clean great room of debris from stucco work

Parker and Helen both wanted to get into some hammer drill action!

3. Move great room timber beams from center of room to end of room, out of the way. well as out of the way as these huge beams can be.

Phoebe and Hope continue the cleaning of the great room.

Rex gave Parker a ride on the lift.

4. Re-set scaffolding into place so we can hang secure new beam in place for 4th floor. I neglected to get pictures of Andy and Michael getting the new beam into place. Michael said it was very heavy and he never doubted for a minute that he and Andy would get it into place as Andy instructed.

5. Move brick from entrance to fungeon. I have handled this brick way too much and I am not moving it again!

I think Parker and Helen share my seniments on that. We did a brick brigade to transfer the brick. Michael and Rex handed us "parker loads" (3 bricks) or "the mother loads" (5-6bricks)from upstairs as Parker, Helen, and I accepted the bricks downstairs and restacked them.

The girls were keeping busy making movies and taking photos outside on the lovely fall day. Helen snapped this shot of our pretty girls!

Helen taking a moment to enjoy the scenery.

Phoebe waiting for her prince to come.

6. Move Sodus Custom House pieces into place where they will be lifted onto the walls. The pieces didn't come with the bottom portions of them, so Andy is going to design and make those. He said it is easier to measure and do this with them in their final place. I vowed never to move these pieces again either, they are darn heavy, but here we go again.

Smiling sends a message to our brain that we are happy and having fun, so I am trying to trick my brain here.

Only 1 finger was hurt in the moving of these enormous blocks, it was mine. I will be fine, thank you for your concern.

This arch will be above this door and entrance to the spiral stairs.

This double arch will be above this entrance into the uper fungeon.

7. dismantle the old cement mixer. The old cement mixer wasn't working, so we
let Rex and Jack go to town on taking it apart.

DAY TWO:

I never seem to take pictures on day two. This is the day Andy & Michael got up @ 6:30am to work on that heavy beam. no pictures as I was sleeping.

Michael, Helen, and I picked up some of the scrap metal in the mout and filled up 2 of these big black crates. Micahel loves his garbage!

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Mike Stender, tha Mason, came by with samples of stone for the turret. It was back and forth for awhile, but we finally decided on a combination of these two colors. Thanks to Boyer Septic Man for making the final call!

8. Remove the screws sticking out of the turret to ready it for insulation. Here are Michael, Parker, and Rex working on that.

9. Insulate the turret with sticky black insulation & then non sticky black insulation. That is Rex and Andy working on that.

10. Talk with reporter from Post Standard who came up to get a progress report for another story. Andy walked her through the inside, I walked her around the property. The story will run when it runs.

11. Clean up site - That would be Helen, Michael, and I doing that and we were so busy doing it, no pictures.

12. Andy stayed behind after we all left to do final measurements for windows so he can order them this week. Patti is on his butt about egtting them ordered and in! Always better to have your best friends push your husband for you!

Welcome another great fall in the Adirondacks!

Boys Weekend

Andy & Rex went up to the castle without Ruby & I last weekend. They got alot done, but they work so hard they forget to take pictures. They came back with a few this time, at my urging, so I will try and piece together what they did.

Some windows got even bigger. They cut out the lower portion of this window.
They got stuck on the other great room window, so the concrete company was going to come back and help them with that.

Some new windows were created. The two upper windows that will be on the fourth floor were knocked out. Andy had been cutting them all along on previous visits. This picture shows one of the new windows. This doesn't look like alot, but once all the cuts are made through the concrete for the window, you get the center piece out by sledge hammering it, ALOT! It is very hard work and very tiring. ALl the while they are doing this remember they are on a 30 ft. high scaffolding, which is scary in and of it self.

When the boys got to the castle it was all wrapped up in this white cover. The Stucco people were there durning the week starting the stucco process and apparently this is part of it. The stucco company also left their lift which Rex became pretty good at operating, so much so, that he had to help Andy use!

You can just barely see that the boys also put a safety fence around the roof for safety reasons of course. You can actuall see the fence better in the previous pictures.
No castle this weekend, I think it is the first weekend ANdy is missing all summer, hope the withdrawls aren't too bad for him. Rex & I are headed to Lake Placid to camp and hike a high peak with the boyscouts. Andy & Ruby are hom working on Rex's birthday present. I am sure Andy will use the time to plan a busy work schedule for us next weekend..

Laboring on Labor Day

So Rex, Andy, & I were at the castle all Labor Day weekend. Andy took the weekend term literally and said we'd be working very long, hard days, so Ruby opted to stay home with the cousins & go to the town carnival.
So we started off with an inspection of the newly poured concrete roof.

Here's the boys inspecting it up and down.

Heres a close up to try and capture the texture. it's a bit rough and very medievil. This will be the same concrete and texture of all the floors on the inside of the castle.

This is a pic looking down into the turret roof which was also poured with the concrete and same texture.

and I as said in the last blog, last weekend the boys stayed and the two of them hung all the brackets on the external wall, here's a picture of them. It is pretty incredible that the two of them could do this, but Andy spends alot of time when he is not at the castle planning and figuring out how to do these sorts of things so when we get to the castle we are very efficient. If he wasn't such a great Architect I would say he could be a great project manager, but I guess that is what makes him so great at it all.

Of course, we had to take a walk to the new lower pnd to see how much it filled in after Irene. Here's the boys inspecting that.

and here is Tosh inspecting the depth of the pond.

Yup, we moved the scaffolding again. This time we set it up outside in preparation for Andy to cut the big new window in the great room. Unfortunately, we ran into a problem with that as the concrete chain saw wouldn't start, so we ended up just taking it down after two days and resetting it up inside the great room. Gotta say, we are pretty good at setting up scaffolding now.

I got a pair of big scissors and was given the task of cutting down all the black waterproofing material so it was at grade level. sounds easy enough, but it was this hard plastic stuff with a cloth material on the other side, so you had to get the scissors just right. I felt like a hair sylist giving the castle a trim. I ended up with 3 blisters and a sore back!

This is a sample of the stucco colors for the exterior of the castle. It looks like we have three shades of grey. The stucco guys actually started this week and should be done in a week or two depending on the weather.

Our very close friend, Ms. Bev surprised us with a visit on Saturday. She said she just woke up and decided to come see the castle. here she is getting her tour of the property.

and her dog Max came to play with Tosh. here they are running on the trail around the property that is now done.

These are the crates that use to have piles of sand in them.Last year when we started the clean up of the castle we found buckets of sand everywhere that Edward was using for the concrete. Andy wanted it all in one place, so we got these crates and carried sand from every floor up to the fourth floor and put it here. Today, Andy had Ms. Bev and I take the last of the sand and we carried it to various floors and filled in concrete holes in window openings.

These were the last five pails of sand that we used up. I have carried that sand in these buckets far too much up and down and all around and I am glad for it to now be inside the walls where I don't have to see it again!

The red cement mixer in the back of this photo was here when we bought the property. Rex, Andy, and I carried it to the 4th floor and used it once or twice before it broke. We got a new one and Rex was given the task of putting it together. This is before.

and here it is done. he did it all himself, no questions asked.

Andy is getting the harness on here as he is going up high on the ladders today.

Here he is climbing up the back face of the castle to tighten in the brackets from the outside. About 2-3 inches of the brackets he and Rex hung last week come out through the exterior of the wall, it will be covered by the stucco, so that is why it was a priority to get the external wall brackets in place and get them tighten before the stucco guys started.

Andy had to go a little higher as he moved down the back face of the castle wall towards the other side.

I was inside hammer drilled this old vent Edward had put in out so we could put our new kitchen fan vent in. This is a picture of the vent gone and the opening.

Patti, Chris, and jack came with Lunch on Sunday and Patti brought us a new table cloth for the picnic table. Were getting relly classy here now.

We took a walk to the lower Pond as the Gallaghers had not seen it. Here's a picture of it as we are walking down. Love this picture.

and Patti inspecting the pond.

Once back at the castle we went to show off the new roof, but we lost Andy on the way as the Mason, Micahel Stender, stopped by to show Andy the stone samples he is going to mix in with our stone to complete the turret. He is ready to get going on that as soon as the stucco guys are done.

Rex and Jack enjoying the new roof.

Patti enjoying the new roof with a gentle breeze blowing through her hair. It is totally awesome up on the roof!

Jack felt like he was flying!

Andy working on placing some other blocking in place on the backside of the castle. This will be a little balcony that extends off the great room window above. Again, the blocks had to go in place before the stucco got sprayed.

Look closely, ndy is napping on the ladder. Working on the blocking for the window balcony/seat thingy. It's got a name and Andy told me what it was, but I forgot and he is at a meeting, so just go with that.

and here is Andy puting the blocks in place for the balcony/window seat area that goes around the side to the front window.

I fug most of this with Rex and Andy jumped in for the photo op. We had to dig around the turret and place blocks in place for waterproofing and footing.

and then once in place, we filled back in the dirt.

Monday was mostly a clean up day, moving the scaffolding, and measuring up, so I didn't get any pictures. Trust me, we were busy.

Anyways, Rex and Andy are headed back tomorrow for more. Ruby & I are home for her first soccer game.

It's on schedule and coming along.

Roof Top Concrete pour

The Concrete Men were at the castle yesterday pouring the new roof floor. Here's some pictures from our guest photographers from Sears Contracting and thePark Motel. Thanks Dawson and Maggie.