August 6, 2024
Greetings!
The Phase One, initial stabilization, work pretty much wrapped up this morning.
Foundation parging painting is done along with painting of the stone window sills. We had hoped not to have to paint the stone sills but it was impossible to get all the old paint removed without damaging the sills. The decision was made to repaint them. Period pictures during William Duclon’s tenure as keeper show them to have been painted. They have been painted the same color as the foundation parging. It looks great. It really ties everything together.
One of the last things Josh and Dion did before wrapping things up was to remove the remaining painter’s tape on the south side of the lighthouse. They will come back in September to check on things and finish a few remaining items they did not finish because they ran out of time. They had to be off this morning for Detroit to work on another job. We are going to miss Josh and Dion. They are part of our Eagle Bluff Lighthouse family.
I cannot say enough about the fantastic work Josh Hood and Dion Cory did at Eagle Bluff Lighthouse. It has never looked better than what is does right now. And thank you to Josh Fletcher for his work during the first ten days back in April when all three of them worked on the lantern room with the sandblasting to remove all the old paint. A big thank you to John Fletcher for his expertise as he guided us through this project.
We also want to acknowledge the work Kurt Fosburg did to remove the Fresnel lens from the lantern at the beginning of the project, reinstall the lens after the lantern work was done and restore the lens once he had it back in the lantern. Thank you Kurt for your terrific work!
One more thank you goes out to Mike LeClair at Baylake Electric for the electrical work. He and Don installed the meter pedestal and circuit breaker panel at the end of May, when we anticipated WPS would install the primary power feed to the lighthouse relatively soon. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for WPS to run the primary electrical feed from Welker’s Point to the lighthouse. The latest information, now that all the hoops (hopefully) have been cleared, is that work should start in two weeks. Fingers crossed!
Next spring John and his crew will be back for the second phase of restoration work to tackle the inside of the lighthouse and follow-up with additional brick and mortar work outside. There are more brick and mortar repairs to be done than what we realized needed to be done when we started this project.
Stay tuned,
Ed
Here are the remarkable “Before and After” comparisons. What a transformation!
