End of May Update - May 31, 2012

May has been a fairly productive month at the Bungalow. We've made progress and we've had some setbacks. On the whole, I think we've ended on a positive note and we've done a lot with the opportunities presented to us. Considering this has been an unusually bad spring allergy season & our business has been so busy, we've made more progress than I would have expected.

                                        Rose bush in side yard in full bloom.

Ron has spent a lot of time this month doing demolition in the basement of the Bungalow so we can repair the wiring & plumbing. I've posted a number of blogs regarding the demolition and there are more to come. We even found a bathroom that we were previously unaware of. The basement is now mostly cleared out and ready for the next steps. All the walls and the ceiling are stripped down to the studs. In some cases, even the studs have been removed.  We now have a clean slate in the basement and Amanda & Eric have begun planning for the new space.

Now that the demolition is essentially complete, work on the plumbing & wiring has started. The wiring in the basement is easier to address because there isn't as much planning required as opposed to the plumbing. On the other hand, wiring to the first & second floors will be more difficult since we'll need to fish the wiring up through the walls. We need to develop a general plan for the plumbing or there will be a lot of rework to do. Unfortunately, it won't be just be a matter of attaching the plumbing from the first & second floors to the new pipes in the basement.

In addition to the work completed on the Bungalow, we have been slowly moving forward on the Horner House. Some of the stabilizing boards have warped, allowing the outer walls of the West Wing to move. More brick has been lost from the top of the west wall in the West Wing. Amanda & I made a quick trip to the property and noticed the changes. Panic immediately set in. We felt a little better after Bill came by and said it might not be as bad as it looked.

Amanda & Eric met with Bill, Bob & Sonny (a brick mason) on site to see what all needs to be done.  Sonny thinks the majority of the bowing in the walls of the West Wing is due to the second course of brick pulling away from the first course, and believes it will be a relatively easy fix when they start work on the masonry. He did, however, emphasize that we need to get the interior flooring reinforced and stabilized in order to keep more damage to the exterior walls throughout the entire building.

Also, according to the Sonny, the debris behind the limestone facing at the Southeast corner was probably put there during construction of the house, and is not the foundation beginning to crumble. Most likely the proximity to the railroad and the many years of vibrations just brought the broken bricks and debris to the surface over time.

Another new complication also arose this month. Amanda & Eric's house in Beech Grove was hit by the hail storm earlier this spring, causing damage to the roof & siding. Bill and the insurance adjuster met Amanda one afternoon to assess the damage. It was fairly substantial and the insurance may not cover everything. It now appears that it will cost them several thousand dollars to fix the damage. Since part of the plan was to use the money from the sale of this house for work on the Horner House, our funding continues to shrink. We trust that God would not have presented this opportunity without providing the means. We just need to work hard and keep our hearts open to the possibilities.

Ron's on his way to Ohio to get his antique motorcycle worked on. Once he gets back, he plans to get busy again on the plumbing. Stay tuned!