Posts and beams are up!

The beams and posts before the stain....only these will remain in graft

Everything else will be open.

The beams and posts are up and in! We have been very busy over the last few weeks, so we apologize for just now getting back on the updates. The interior structure is now completely done. We have the main dining room ready to go; remember it's all open space now, all of the walls are gone! We are reclaiming all of the old tongue and groove heart pine wood from the walls to make our banquet seating, bar and tables. The banquet seating is in, which is across from the bar after we enclosed one of the front doors. For some interesting reason, there were two entrance doors off of the front porch...it's been fun trying to guess when and why the doors, rooms and windows were built on to the Cofer estate.

Daniel has been an invaluable help and asset to Seth. We are so grateful to the continued help from Thad, Bradford, Chad and our friends Adam, Jordan and others who have shared their time, knowledge and excitement for us.

Continued progress

The cold and the rainy days have definitely proved challenging, but we are excited to see the continued progress! All of the framing-out on the interior is now completed for the new other bathroom, addition to the kitchen, banquetseating area and new kitchen flooring. The beautiful French doors are in and we are excited to finish the build-out of the deck with ramps. The big project in the next few days will be to install the huge 12-foot 6x6 posts and beams in order to completely support the roof as we have taken out all the inside walls.

I know many of you wonder what is going on, but I promise, the inside

looks awesome!! The exterior paint is soon to come....it will have a face lift!

Many thanks to the very efficient and resourceful help from Thad, Bradford, Chad, my dad, Adam and my sweet friend Caron. You guys are wonderful! Even, Bear, our little labrador helper who traveled from Decatur, has been a source of encouragement.

French doors get some color

 The new 8' French Doors look amazing with a coat of stain, now if the weather would warm up enough for me to put on some urethane we could get these beauties installed.

Restoring Original Doors

We have decided to return the original interior doors to there original luster, before years of paint took their toll on these beautiful solid wooded doors.  Equipped with our Hyde scraper and little bit (well no a lot) of elbow grease.  These doors revealed some amazing texture, tone, and color.  Most likely not seen in over 100 years.

Nice gloves...

Attic structural work

In an old house you are going to, without a doubt, run into some failing lumber. One of the ceilings was sagging a bit and the valley in the roof is sagging, as well. After speaking with our structural engineer (Daddy Gilliam), we devised a way to clamp off to one of the existing chimneys to help support the load. As you can see, we created a giant clamp from 2x12's and tied it off to all of the ceiling joists that were sagging. Thanks to some help from my brother-in-laws Thad & Bradford we made quick work of it.

Footer day

Pouring 6 concrete footers today to handle the load of the prep room and load bearing walls that will come out and be supported with new beams.
36 - 80lb bags of concrete, that's Ashley and I's exercise of the day. Haha....but really!

Well, the freezing weather has postponed us finishing up the footers. We have to wait until Thursday to pour again which is when the nightly temp should be back up.

Our new French doors

Picking up 2 sets of French doors. Nice-nice