A Pryor Commitment

The Pryor House lost her crew chief last week. On September 23rd, I posted on the stairs in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. I didn’t know on September 26th we would lose our Pop, the man behind that demo in a fatal car accident. He was 86 and he could out work, out think, and out plan all of us. We will never be able to fill those coveralls or forget all the work he put in. Bill Hodges, we can never thank you enough.

Taking down the floating staircase at the Apperson House in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. All the credit goes to Pop and Avery Branner. Without Pop’s woodworking knowledge and Avery’s height they would have never made it to the truck. Dreaming of it being in the Pryor House someday…

Honestly, we had NO idea what we were getting into. Taking apart an 1847 house? HA! We never had dismantled a home THAT old in it’s original state. Talk about a learning curve. We were told to bring a sawsaw, some crowbars and a reverse nailer (I have whole post about the amazing pneumatic Air Locker reverse nailer coming later). Harbor Freight, you became our new besties with those Pittsburgh tools!
What worked best at the Kentucky house was TEAMWORK. Our friend Tom Branner, our sons Blake and Reece and the two of us came on our 1st of 4 demo trips. Tom worked with Greg and the guys worked together. I had the best partner though. Millie was my shadow that whole trip. She and I took all the trim out of the attic. She was a huge help between naps. We lost Millie to cancer a month later. In the following trips, Tom’s son, Avery Branner and Reece’s friend, Jared Teston came to help and were amazing. Even our Pop came and worked a day when we took down the main staircase. Blessed by these good good friends and family

Digging around at the house today we found this 1860s champagne/wine bottle. I learned about the deep “punt”, the indent in the bottom of the bottle.