Well folks, it’s been a very wet and stormy winter here, so much so that we had a “water spout” come up off the ocean and whip up the driveway of the place we are renting sending a small road sign from across the street flying towards the house! Fortunately, the sign got stuck on the mailbox post out near the street, otherwise we might have seen it come flying into the living room! Yikes! We found it funny, though, that this water spout actual made the local news and gained the attention of the National Weather Service (they came knocking on our door asking if we saw it!). Here’s what the local news had to say about this:

“Gusts up to 40 mph churning off the Central Coast on Sunday generated a 85 mph water spout about noon, when it hit West Cliff Drive and punched inland 125 yards, tossing a sign and damaging a tree, according to the National Weather Service. ”

Still, all of this is nothing compared to what the midwest, east coast and other places across the states and globe have seen this winter. I think I speak for us all when I say that we are ready for spring and summer.

With storm after storm hitting us hard here, our project slowed a bit; but our construction crews were real troopers, working diligently between the storms to get our walls up and roof on as quickly as they could. As you’ll see in the pictures below, the first phase of the roof work and exterior construction are now complete, getting us ready to tackle the next phases of work. At this point, we are just thrilled to see the roof on and to find out that the crew passed their first roofing inspection yesterday! Major kudos to Taylor, Brian and the team for making this happen despite the weather conditions.

Also, despite the cold and wet conditions, Mike was able to complete important repairs to our brick castle. Specifically, he had to use an extra strength bonding material, called out by our lead engineer at Mesiti-Miller, Dale Hendsbee, to repair sections along the castle veranda ceiling where chunks of concrete had fallen out exposing rebar and causing it to rust badly. This damage was caused by rain water that would accumulate along the unfinished second floor/roof year after year over the decades, ultimately taking a nasty toll on the concrete and rebar underneath along the veranda. While this looked horrible, Mike discovered that the damage wasn’t extensive and he was able to patch these cracks and holes with relative ease. Mike also did a fantastic job of repairing the front fence/wall sections, which we weren’t sure could happen as they were in a pretty bad state. But, as usual, Mike puzzled the solution out and now they look great! We look forward to giving them a fresh coat of white paint later on in the project. Lastly, Mike designed beautiful caps for the posts of the interior stairwell, which didn’t exist before and now look like they were part of the original design. Such a craftsman and artisan!

With these important repairs and design elements completed Mike is on a slight break, but phase II of his restoration work will begin in a few months. This will entail repairs and clean up of the interior of the temple and final repairs to the front portal, fence/wall, courtyard. We expect much of this to happen later this summer and fall once we are able to shift to interior finish work and landscaping.

We hope you have endured the winter well and are healthy and ready to get outside to enjoy the sunshine. We know we are! Enjoy the pictures and let us know if you’re going to be in the area and want to see the project in person 😉