2/27/08

Basement Plans-Wine Cellar?
Mr. Cain sent me over his plans for the crawl space—now officially a basement. Certainly looks nice to me, with plenty of room for wood and wine. The basic idea is to poor a slab with a wall inside the existing wall supporting a shelf. He’s giving us some options on the entrance—minimal or expensive. One with an full height door—the other with the stoop down, step down traditional root cellar thing. I’m leaning toward the later. We will need to get some cost on this but in my mind it’s already done. Jim might be able to get busy on it and that is my intention, if affordable.

2/17/08

Recycling Lore-Wide Shot
It was not quite as nice a day this Saturday as last. - but still warm. I rode up to my father-in-laws and we took his truck down to the shop. I got to work loading the wire an copper pipe. Bob and Bonnie helped. We were told that all the soldered joints must be cut out to get grade #1 or $3.45 lb. - so I hacked them off. It was much harder bundling up the wire and it took several hours to get it all loaded into Bob’s old Ford pickup. We started out about 3 p.m. for the re claimers up GA 384 25 miles away in Cornelia. It turned out to be quite an adventure. We had only about a quarter tank of gas and bad directions - finally after an hour, a few anxious moments trying to find a gas station, and cell phone call, we made it to Bobby’s Recycling. It turned out to be a treasure trove of mountain personalities fulfilling all your wildest stereotypes. I gave a hand getting all the pipe and wire out and weighing the different grades. We had a 197 lbs. of wire plus the pipe. They wouldn’t give me anything for the wire inside the metal pipes so strip it out if you get a chance. They gave me a slip and I took it to the office, a young lady wrote me out a check for $497—Not bad.
I took a few nice shots using my wide angle - two stitched together for this picture of my entire world on Center Baptist Church Loop.

2/9/08

Heading to Helen-Window shots
Sautee Nachoochee Valley can be about as pretty as a place gets. The weather has been great for February and I was looking forward to the drive up—put the top down—brought the dog. I took pictures with my digital all the way up, and when I got there at about noon I took a lot more—160 or so.
For some reason they left two windows in place in the courtyard area - plus the eight boarded up ones in the shop. They cleaned up the glass pretty well but we now have a pile of twisted window frames adding to the mess outside. Next week I want to gather up all the copper wire and pipes and take it to the re claimers.
Bonnie and I hung around and bumped into the neighbors. We ended up talking to them for a while —they have a scotty too. Took a few more shots and headed up to the Wurls to check in. I went home the long way via Dahlonega and Dawsonville- got back about 6p.m..
For some reason only the last 40 or so pictures came out—Dang, cause the ones that did were very good. I added some to the demo slide show. The light was brilliant all day. I’ll be going up again next weekend.

2/7/08

Windows pulled out today Midtown meeting?
Jim & Co. pulled all the windows out except in the shop today. They ended up busting out the masonry fairly easily acording to him and pulling them out with the truck in most cases. I'm going up Saturday to see and do a survey of the block damage. I would guess it must repaired before we go to much further. The entire back right corner might have to be rebuilt along with a few headers along the back windows. Jim was thinking we could bring it down and get a bobcat in there to dig out some of the dirt in the crawl space. Then put it back up.
Sounds like it might be the easiest way. Bob Cain wrote to me that he had some ideas for that area so I want to check with him before we go much further.
Might be time for another midtown meeting. This time it would be good to have Mr. Johnston in attendance.