Things have been so busy, the blog has taken a back seat. With that said, our bank loan is supposed to finally close next week, the mechanical engineer is about done with his drawings, and we are back at the building working as much as possible. In the 3 months or so that this blog has been inactive, we have done a ton of things that I'll try and detail in future posts. We've structurally stabilized the building which has been the biggest feat thus far.

To get to our latest works, we knew we had some flooring issues upstairs. The floor joists were built with a 20' span, which is far longer than any building should have. A 20' span means the joists go a continuos 20' without a column for stability. In the 120 years since this building was built, these joists have sagged more and more.

As this problem developed years ago, the owners decided to level the sagging floors by building a 2nd floor on top of the first. Rather than fixing the problem, they made a purely cosmetic fix while allowing the problem to become worse. This has been an issue with about everything we've encountered inside this building.

As we began looking at the floor and debating our options, we tore off a bit to see what we had to work with. Under this 2nd floor was a disgusting amount of dirt, filth, and plaster...which made our decision rather easy. We have been tearing our all of the flooring, saving the good pieces for reuse.

Right now, you could say we have the largest and most impressive indoor pergola in Festus.