07.13.07
Long Awaited Update
I know all of you have been waiting on news from the congregation here in Edisto… I apologize for taking so long. In this case, no news is good news. We have been steadily working on the building here, adding to the handrails. Last week (the first week in July) we worked with the youth from the Central congregation in Johnson City, Tennessee, who made their fourth visit. This year they were joined by some members of the Jefferson Avenue congregation in Cookeville, Tennessee. The nearly fifty folks worked in some hot, humid weather to clear brush from the lot (nearly completely so) and stain and seal the building. I hope to post many pictures in the next few days.
During our work last week, we discovered that one of the original support posts that we installed to hold up the front porch gable was badly decomposed. The post was slightly damaged when we installed it a few years ago, but due to the cost involved (the post is an irregular cut of heavy lumber) we chose to use it anyway. Now that we are much more experienced we were able to fashion a new post out of one of the extra logs left over from construction of the walls of the building. Using jacks, we were able to remove the damaged post and replace it with a healthy one. We have jumped one of the hurdles of long-term construction projects: maintenance on prior work. We sometimes wonder if Noah encountered similar circumstances! Next week we will return to our task of building handrails.