Good Friday

Well today was a Good Friday, in more than one way.

Since M was out of school today I decided to take the day off of work  (read, I did not go to work, still had to answer the phone, read e-mails, and be on conference calls.  Hmmm. when did taking a vacation mean that I could not take a vacation?  ANYWAY)

I decided that today we were going to move the bell.  Thats right, me and my 9 year old child were going to take on moving a 1000 lb cast iron bell from the ground to its new home.

For those of you not up to date on this saga, here is some light reading for you

Big Move in

The Bell

A Look Back, The Bell

Thursday evening we went to the Blue Box to get some supplies and were all ready to go Friday morning. I drug M out of bed early and we were out the door in the old pickup driving down the road at 7am to pickup our rental.    Rental you say?  Rental of what?

Rental of the engine hoist that would do all the work.  You can see we have sheets of OSB laid out for the hoist to ride on

We chained the bell to the hoist and proceeded to pick it up off the concrete blocks it has been resting on for the past 9 months.

the hoist worked like a champ and let us move it easily

We were able to move the bell forward and set it down on its supports in its new resting spot

It took M and I a little bit to get it shifted over to be in the right spot, but finally

we got it in place and set, then using some expansion anchors, got it bolted down solid.

Since the anchors were a little long, we had to cut them off, guess who got to use the cutting wheel?

ahh, a young boy making fire with steel, makes you feel all gushy inside....

Washed all the dirt and junk off it and stood back to get a good look at it...

I have to say this makes me very happy to have this thing in its new resting spot as opposed to those concrete blocks.

We even did a first ringing of the bell

I cant say this project is done, because I still have some work to do on the area around the bell,  place some brick and work on some landscaping.  But I am a lot closer than I have been for the last few months, and much happier all the way around.


DD