Finally!

Been way more than a week, I know, but it's just that time of year:  budget time.  At any rate, the budget is finally finished and so I am gonna renew my effort here with this update.

We've seen a lot of change since our last post.

They are still doing some honing.  Some of the stain, mostly on the north elevation, was more stubborn and harder to remove; deeper.  So the masons had to work a little harder to get it all gone.  They are still working.

The roof is done and it has not leaked yet. All of the roof drains were partially plugged and the water that was not coming out of the drains was apparently coming out in the line elbows at the base of the building.  This work was probably done in the early 1990's when we had a company supposedly who supposedly cleared the drains when they did some work on the roof.  The one they brought me had a hole in the top the size of a ping pong ball.  If they were all the same, it would explain why the water was disappearing in the testing.

Perhaps someday it will rain and we can give it a good test.

The refurbished spandrels began to arrive week before last and now all of the ones on the south elevation are restored and some on the east and west elevations.  The marble panels are beautiful!  Here let me show you.

This one gives a pretty good peek at what we can see of her when all the work is finished.  But that visions is still blurred a lot by the dust and the dirty windows and debris on the ground.

We have been given word that the new stone for the two top courses that were removed will begin arriving this week.  The first course actually.

In furtherance of my theory that the architect was trying to achieve the Greco-Roman temple look you will note in the photo last above the 5 gray panels at the top of the windows.  They were painted gray to match the painted marble panels.  They are "obscure" glass as mentioned before.  We are looking at painting a piece of masonite the same color as the window jams or plain black to then cover them with unpainted obscure glass.  Obscure here means you cannot really see through it.  The color will come through however and so the entire windows, spandrels, and the little glass panels will appear dark at a distance.

We did discover one oddity which may shed some light on why the panels were painted.  The workers continue to remove the marble panels for cleaning and in doing so last week we discovered that one of them is not marble but actually a concrete slab.  Apparently one of them had cracked so bad that it was replaced in its entirety.  Hmmmm???  I wonder where the other one went?  These stone guys are good!!!  A couple of weeks ago some of the panels came off in small pieces but they are putting them together like a jigsaw puzzle.  When finished, I doubt that we will be able to tell.

 

I told you I would tell you about the Courthouse's first guardian and that I will.

He was a native son and was elected to serve two terms as the County Judge.  His first term began in 1913 and his second term in 1937.  He was an attorney by training.

He was John P. Simpson.  More next time.

Spandrels!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New things this week and some more of the same seems to be the order of things.

[I thought this one had been posted but disovered tonight while trying to finish the next one that it had not.  I will post it and finish the other]

Roof & Stone

The dripping seems to have stopped but we still have blowers and humidifiers stored with us and we had a jury trial in the District Court that took most of the week.  It may be that they put some of that back out to dry things out a little more.

There is still a little smell that you notice when you first walk in but things are much improved.

The roofer is making headway on finishing the roof and their is now rain in the forecast toward the end of next week.

They tested the drains this week to see if they were draining.  We were concerned about one from the beginning.  Tests results may indicate we have more problems than just with the one.  Short version:  they pressured up something like a balloon in them to load the pipe with water and the water did not fill the pipe but no leaks found.. They don't know where the water went.  Into a parallel dimension hopefully!

The first round of the honing continues.  It has gone well but there are some spots in which the staining is deeper than others.  They are re-working those spots to go a little deeper.

Spandrels

They have taken down some more of the marble panels and we now have two back up which are located on the south elevation.  They are beautiful as you can see.  Notice now the blended color from the metal window frame.  It is a good match, I think.  These are in the same exact position from which they were removed.

Not all of their removal is easy.  Many of them are in more that one piece when they come down.  Each spandrell has a specific number in the scheme and each piece is then numbered and lettered to identify it.  I have a number of photos on pieces in 5 gallon buckets.  Here's a close up of one that was in pretty bad shape and then a couple of pics of another in pieces (note they are numbered and tagged for restoration).






I told you I would tell you about the Courhouse's first guardian and I will but will do it in next segment.