April 26th, 2008-Turning the corner: Home Stretch is in Sight!

Before Laura and I were blessed with the arrival of Adam and Zoe, I logged a lot of jogging miles training for the Beaches to Beacon 10K race. One season I ran the Peak's island 5 miler as a warmup for the big race. My lasting memory of the Peak's race is that due to Peak's small size, the course has to backtrack near mile 4 because there isn't enough road surface on the island for a full five mile loop. I remember how difficult it was to see other runners who were ahead of me running in the opposite direction as they headed to the finish line. This past weekend reminded me of that race. I know we are just about to turn the corner to head towards the finish line for this phase of this project, but it sure seems a long ways away!

When I arrived on Saturday morning I ran around the house like a kid on Christmas. Jim, Larry, Dave, Jason and Greg had done a phenomenal amount of work in the past week. They had removed most of the downstairs windows in Lupine and installed new downstairs windows in Equinox.

They had even installed two new doors! The rear deck door in Equinox was replaced with a new steel fifteen lite door. The existing porch door in the west wing living room had been moved to where the window next to the basement stairs used to be.

Our water heater arrived sometime during the week. Dave and Jason plan to hook it up on Friday.

Our seemingly unending streak of good fortune with friends lending a hand continued this week. Dan's friend Jeff joined Jane, Abbie and Andew to lend a hand on Saturday. Laura stayed in Gorham for the day to watch Zoe and Adam.

We put in a looooong day on Saturday. Wallpaper removal was the order of the day. The master bedroom in the west wing turned into a huge challenge because the wallpaper was coated in at least two layers of paint. We didn't finish the whole room on Saturday, but I'm sure we will this weekend.

We removed all the wallpaper from the west wing's second bedroom and the entire hallway.

While we were putting demo debris into the dumpster we found that the windows that had been removed from the west wing were originally supplied by Poole Brothers. I find it waaay cool that we're using the same lumber yard for our new windows that someone 60+ years ago used during the last major renovation at the guest house

Susan Ropes from LD Chase Realty told us how glad she and the rest of the crew at LD Chase Realty are that we're renovating the "Lewis Farmhouse". It seems like a lot of people in town are very happy that the house is not going to be torn down. Hopefully our work is one way to "give back" to a community that Laura and I hope to be part of for many years.

Next weekend we hope to finish up with the wallpaper removal and start skim coating the walls to prepare for painting. Hopefuly next weekend we'll 100% feel like we've finally turned that corner.

Posted by Jeremy
4/29/08 9:20 PM

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