In which it is Spring, finally, in Maine and activities turn to building the porch.

The boys started on the porch for the front of the building a few days ago and as of last night, we could enjoy a tremendous view from the second floor.  I arrived at the job site yesterday morning to a proud foreman on the second floor coming out of the door and asking me what I thought of the porch.  "I %$^&&* hate it" is what I said, and with a straight face I told them to stop work and start taking it down.  "It doesn't work for me." I said.  There was dead silence among the crew as I locked eyes with the foreman and reiterated that he take it down.  "You're serious" he said.  I didn't crack.  He grumbled that he would bring a chain saw the next day and tear the thing off himself.  I looked disgusted as I shook my head and said "April fools!"  I thought he was going to walk off the job right there.  I think he got hell for it all day from the boys.  Poor guy.

The porch looks great though, just what the building was missing.  

If you haven't read the blog all the way through and know the building without a porch and are wondering why we are putting a porch on, take a look at the old photo we use for the blog.  There was a porch on the front of the building around 1900.  The site lends itself to a porch, we have the space, and it looks great.  I am not sure the porch was originally on the building, but Greg and I talked at length about it and decided that to really stand out in town for renters and shoppers alike, we would need something that no building on Main Street had....a porch and a front courtyard.  The second floor of the porch will be amazing for apartment renters who want to sit on their porch in the morning with the paper and a cup of coffee and watch Belfast awake.

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering, the original color of the building was a cream yellow.  Wait, did you get that? Let me stress the point here.  The original color of the building was yellow.

Some of you might know the story of how we spent 45 minutes in a meeting defending our choice of yellow clapboards for the exterior of the building. We ultimately went with another color because we had so much opposition to our choice of yellow.  Well, I am here to say that the original color of the building was not too far off our original color choice.