Who wants a renovation update on our future office building? Why, everyone does!
The focus of this week has been on brick. We're proud of the care we are taking to make the Pope Residence strong and safe enough to last another century.
The demolition team worked hard this week to get all the remaining plaster off the downstairs walls to see what shape the underlying brick is in. I think Kathleen and I were in complete awe when we saw her and Lee's future offices.
The two grand rooms look even more grand, even with all the dust on the floors.
The reason there's so much dust on the floors is that Cody has called in a master mason to go over all the brick and make sure it's in good shape. The team of masons has been cutting out bad bricks and replacing them with better ones (hence all the mortar dust), and they have been adding mortar where needed.
It's a time-consuming and quite impressive job. We are really excited to see the end results, because after this is done, the team gets to start putting the building back together.
Other things that have been done include finding a leak in the ceiling of the rear addition (we'll address that with a ROOF!), finishing emptying out the main bathroom and working on leveling the sagging beam.
We realized, too, that there used to be a wall, just in front of where the weird window to the interior hallway is. This confirms that at some point, the house did not go all the way back.
Here's a gallery of more pictures of the progress.
Love it!