On Thanksgiving Day weekend, after enjoying some fantastic Thanksgiving Day food and family time on Thursday, the Lutgen family converged on the family bar the following couple of days.

Friday we had a big crew and got quite a bit accomplished. We finished tearing the wall between the two upstairs’ down to the studs (so that the construction crew could get right to it), got the flooring that we pulled up hauled down to the shed and stacked on pallets, and had a big reveal!

When Al pulled the stucco off of the north side of the building there was a bit of a surprise that we found underneath. A painted on sign that (we’re figuring) was put there sometime between 1936-1939 by John (Jack) Frank who was renting the place at the time. Quite a bit of the town showed up for the big reveal of the partial message that they’d been driving by the whole week before.

Quite a fun little surprise.

On Saturday we had a few of the cousins and their kids stop in to check out the progress and they (the kids) had a fun time knocking holes and plaster off of the walls. I think they would’ve stayed all day/night long if they could have!

I also went up on Tuesday (11/28) to retrieve the sign to be saved and reused as decoration inside the future bar. I also worked with Al (it was mostly Al) to pull the siding and stucco off of the front of the building, exposing some cool original siding underneath.

And finally, the construction crew is coming this Monday (12/11) to start up so we had a big push the last week and a half to finish getting everything ready for them. (I apologize for the lighting on a few of these)

Anyway, it seems like these big posts are going to be more common than I’d like, sorry about that! I’ll try to get back to weekly updates.