Do You Hear That Drilling? Or What Did You Say? The Trials of UpGrading a Building While You Keep It Open.

We are in the middle of a seismic upgrade on half of our Library.  The half that is an old Carnegie that was finished in 1915.  This is the half that housed the non-fiction collection, magazines, my office, and all our meeting rooms.  We have moved all of the books and magazines and furniture to a half restored building that is across a large parking lot, about a 5 minutes away. 

Last week the core drilling started to make the walls stable.  There are only two contractors in the country who are licensed for this type of drilling.  They are from California.  The top two pictures show the machinery on the roof of the old building and the second shows if you enlarge it...the red dust coming out of the brick wall as they drill down from the roof into the foundation. The sound is loud, but not as loud as we thought it would be.

 Next week they will be doing the interior wall that is inside the library that will not be remodeled.  The old Carnegie is on the National Historic Register and when they added onto the building in the late 70's they would only allow the addition if the building with it's stained glass windows was inside of the addition.  So the north and east brick walls are inside the addition.  They will be drilling the walls right in front of the circulation desk.

So now in addition to having half of the library closed, no meeting space, building sounds; we will have red dust coming out of those brick walls near the circulation desk.  Come in and see how it is going.