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1-7-09 This is what the castle looks like at the beginning of 2009. This photo was taken just after we had an ice storm here.

1-12-09 Our friend Woody stopped by for a quick meal.

1-12-09 Galins girlfriend Princess Anya (go here to see Anya when she layed seige to the castle in 2006) was selected as the cover girl for the 2009 " Weimaraner Club of America " Calendar.

1-12-09 Our new cat Caspian thinks he is as pretty as a picture.

1-13-09 The doorknobs that I am installing on most of the kings level (third floor) are made of diamonds. At least that's what the traveling merchant who sold them to me said they are. He also sold me a place called Broklynbridge and some very nice magic beans.

1-16-09 I have now finished installing the floor molding in the king's chamber. I still need to finish painting all the molding with a primer coat. After that I just need to put the final coat of paint on the walls and trim, and have the carpet installed. This may all take a while, I have not yet decided on the colors for this room.

1-20-09 I am about to build a wall around the stairway that goes to the battle deck (roof). I have removed the steps, and am starting to install wallboard on the outside wall.

2-1-09 It's difficult to see from this photo, but I have built a wall, installed a door, and put back the steps. In the photo, you can also see a small sink with a garden hose attached to the faucet. This is in case there is ever a fire on the third floor or roof, there will be a water source close by.

This nice aerial shot of the castle was taken on October 27, 2008. The photo is the courtesy of persons who would like to remain anonymous. Thank you anonymous persons. You can see the garage in the shadow to the right, and you can see the storage building off to the left.

2-17-09 My next task will be to finish this area. It is on the kings level (third floor), and will be used as the kings computer room. I need to build two walls, install the wallboard, carpet, etc.

2-24-09 Most of the studs are now up for the two new walls for this room. This will be the kings office/computer room/den/library. I need a name for it that is more castle-like. Someone suggested the "Kings strategy room" or perhaps the "kings retreat". I've also had suggestions of:
Kings inner sanctum,
royal planning room,
royal concentration chamber,
royal thinking chamber,
kings haven,
royal library,
lions den,
kings lair,
kings den,
solarium.
Campaign room

Battle command room
Forces command room
Strategic command room
Strategic forces room
Castle defense room
Castle forces room
Battle forces planning room
Force battle command room
Strategic defense room

The Kings Technology Chamber

King's War Room
King's Think Tank

the sanctum sanctorum

King's Alchemy Chamber ---- "Where royal ideas are transformed into gold"

Anyone have any ideas for a better name?

3-5-09 This is what the room looks like now. I have finished the two new walls, and I have installed all the drywall which has been "mudded and taped". I still need to do the final sanding, paint the walls with a coat of primer, final painting, install trim pieces, a door, and final flooring material. I have still not decided on carpet, hardwood, or vinyl flooring. I like to have a lot of electrical outlets. This room has a total of 19.

3-9-09 The weather has been so good for the last couple of days, I decided to do some work outside. I just finished the front walkway on the battle deck (roof). There is still about another 15 feet to go to have the deck done all the way around the perimeter of the castle. I need to finish this walkway in order to move the blocks up on the roof to build the crenelations. I hope to be able to do the crenelations this summer.

3-18-09 I have now finished the walkway around the roof (battledeck). I still need to finish the deck in one of the towers. Now that the walkway is finished, I can start thinking about bringing up the blocks necessary to build the crenelations.

3-19-09 I will be using vinyl tile in the new room. Before I put down the tile, I needed to cover the floor with an extra layer of plywood to smooth things out.

3-28-09 The King's Den (or whatever I decide to call it), is now finished except for the permanent light fixtures, and installation of the diamond doorknob. This is the same area that is shown in the photo above marked as 2-17-09.

4-5-09 In order to get the blocks that will be used to build the crenelations up to the roof, I built a temporary support for the electric hoist. This seems to work pretty well. It takes about one minute for the blocks to go from the ground to the roof. It's a heck of a lot easier than carrying them up three flights of stairs.

4-12-09 I came down Easter morning to discover that Galin had tried to disguise himself as the Easter Bunny. I think he wanted what was in the baskets, but fortunately, I got there in time. He'll need a better disguise than that if he wants to fool the king.

4-16-09 It is just a few days after Easter, and I happened to see one of the Easter Bunny's helpers in our yard. I guess he is taking a well deserved vacation after all the excitement of Easter.

4-17-09 Yesterday was a busy day. I installed the crenelations on one of the four straight walls. I still need to put crenelations on the other three walls and the two towers.

4-17-09 Some of our friends from the forest heard that we had new crenelations and came by this morning to see them. I'm not sure if they liked them, but I didn't hear any negative comments.

4-18-09 I have finished most of the crenelations on another wall. There is one merlon (the part that sticks up) left to do on this wall, but will not be completed till all the others have been done. I need to keep this space open to be able to use the temporary hoist.

4-19-09 Today was the annual "Little Yellow Bird" convention. These birds bring us news from other places. They informed us that the people from Marlandria are headed this way. If they come in peace and friendship, we will welcome them. If they come to lay seige to the castle again (go here to see when they layed seige to the castle in 2006), we will defeat them.

4-25-09 I have finished the crenelations on the third wall (the one on the left). I still have one more straight wall to do as well as the two towers.

4-28-09 I have finished installing the blocks for the merlons on the forth wall (the one on the left). Even though the blocks are installed, I am not finished with the merlons. I still need to reinforce them, and cover them.

4-28-09 In order to reinforce them, I am placing a re-bar down at least two holes in each merlon. I then pour concrete down the holes. This gives a solid piece of reinforced concrete about six feet long. This should keep the merlons from being knocked down in case we are attacked by invading forces with a pumpkin throwing trebuchet.

5-11-09 Mother nature left us a little surprise in our storage shed. I guess we will keep these cute little "castle kittens" until they are a little older and try to give them away. Mom is still here to take care of them. We will feed her to make sure she has enough energy to take care of these little critters. If you would like to own an authentic "Castle Cat", let us know.

5-16-09 I need flat concrete blocks to put caps on the tops of the walls. I was unable to find the correct size for the crenels (the spaces between the merlons on the top of the walls), so I decided to build some forms and pour my own cap blocks. I am only doing three at a time, so it will take a while to make them all.

5-18-09 It looks like our bear is back. I looked out the window this morning and saw that the bird feeder had been knocked down. The last time this happened was last fall and we saw a bear at the time. It looked to be about five feet tall when standing on it's hind legs. Not an adult, but not a baby either. I'll set up the deer cam to see if I can get a photo of the bear if he/she comes back. The birds are not going to be happy, we will stop putting out bird seed for a while.

5-27-09 We have not seen our friend Limpy for a while, but he showed up today. He is now growing his own little set of antlers.

6-27-09 We had visitors today. Keith and Chris stopped by to see the castle. We enjoyed their visit. Keith is from California and is thinking about building a castle there. We hope he succeeds, we need all the castles we can get.

7-1-2009 This photo of Patty and I was taken by David Abner who is a reporter for the local newspaper "The Morgan Messenger". He wrote a story about our castle which was printed in the July 1st edition of the paper. If you are interested, you can read it here: http://74.95.82.237:591/mmonline/FMPro?-db=mmonline.fp5&-format=record%5fdetail.html&-lay=allfields&lay=allfields&Category=Community%20News&ArticleStatus=Current&-max=20&-recid=12592279&-find=

To see the actual page, go here.

7-9-2009 While Sir Galin and I were taking our morning walk, Galin noticed our friend Rodney Raccoon way up in a tree. Galin wanted him to come down to play, but Rodney just sat there staying very still. Perhaps he will come and play some other time.

7-18-2009 Tony and Mary Beth were Patty's next door neighbors when she lived in Alexandria. They came up to see the castle and pick a few blackberries. Perhaps they can use them to make a nice Blackberry Cobbler. A good time was had by all.

7-21-2009 I started building the deck for the second tower a couple of years ago. It's time to get back to work on it. I need to finish it to make it easier to build the crenelations on this tower.

7-22-2009 One of our friends stopped by today to show us how long his antlers are getting. We are not sure who this is.

8-4-2009 Almost all the work has been done on the battledeck for the entrance tower. We now have a place from which to drop boiling oil (or water balloons) on anyone coming to the front door. Also, I can now put the blocks in place to build the crenelations on this tower.

8-18-2009 Our friend Socks came around today. It appears that she has a new offspring. She didn't tell us it's name, so for now, we will just call it Spot.

8-23-2009 Julie Green, who is the nice reporter from the Hagerstown Herald-Mail came by and did a nice story about the castle for her newspaper. If you're interested, you can read it here: http://herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=228951&format=html

9-1-2009 This is what most of the straight crenelations look like now. The caps were placed on top of the merlons with the help of Sir T.O. There is an important story that goes along with this effort, to see the story, go here.

THE 2009 SIEGE OF DUPONT CASTLE

10-2-2009 I have installed the first of our lightning rods. This rod is on the entry tower and is grounded with a special copper wire made just for lightning protection. There will be several more rods later.

10-10-2009 I finally got started on building a small front porch. Although it is now functional, it is not finished. I still need to add railings. Also, if you look closely, you will see that the floor is at the same level as the door threshold. This is to make the porch a little more wheelchair friendly just in case we ever have a visitor that needs wheelchair access. When I get time, I will build a ramp off to the left that is wide enough for a wheelchair. It never hurts to plan ahead.

10-11-2009 Our friends Mark and Barbara came up for a weekend visit. While here, Mark helped me place the top caps on the crenelations on the towers. Almost all of the crenelations are now finished.

10-30-2009 Our friends Tommie and Wendel came up for an afternoon visit. They drove up from the Alexandria area. I think they thought it was worth the trip. We were very pleased to see them. The third person in the photo is of course Queen Patricia.

11-12-2009 John and Linda drove all the way down from Shippensburg, PA just to see the castle. We enjoyed showing them around, I hope they thought it was worth the drive. They seemed to enjoy our cats, they have several of their own.

11-14-2009 The next room I will be working on is the tower room that connects to the Queens Chamber (bedroom).

11-16-2009 The first thing I need to do is to build and install what I call window boxes around all five windows in the tower. The window on the left is before a window box is installed, and the window on the right is after.

11-22-2009 The window boxes are now in place. The next thing I did was to install the wallboard on the ceiling. You will notice that in addition to the light fixture, there is a fire sprinkler installed. We have these in most rooms of the castle. The next thing I need to do in this room is to install something on the walls. Because they are curved, I cannot use wallboard. I need to use 1/8 inch paneling, which is difficult to find these days. It may be a while till we come up with something for the walls.

11-22-2009 Since it may be a while till I find something for the walls in the queens tower, I will start working on the first floor room of the same tower. This is the room where the front door is located. We will have a coat closet here and there will be another set of doors from this room leading into the greeting chamber (living room).

11-23-2009 Lady Trina has a minor ear infection. When she found out about it, she was so depressed that she went to a party, got drunk, and came home with a lampshade on her head. She should be fine in about a week or so.

11-24-2009 The first thing I needed to do here is install these studs for the wall for the coat closet.

12-6-2009 I have now installed most of the drywall. The curved walls were a little difficult. I was able to find some 1/4 inch drywall that is rated "high flex". It is more expensive that normal drywall, but it bends enough to work on our walls.

12-07-2009 I had trouble finding the 1/8 inch paneling that I would have liked, but I got some 1/4 inch that seems to bend well enough for our towers. I have installed about half of the paneling in the queens chamber tower.

12-21-2009 Most people think there is no such thing as a Unicorn. That's not true, we have one living in the woods near the castle. He comes out during the winter to eat the corn that we throw out for the deer.

More Photos will be added as time permits.

Click here to send E-Mail to Jim or Patty.

Princess Patricia and I would like to say a special THANK YOU to the following people who have volunteered time and energy to help with the work at the castle site.

Bill Postlethwait
Mariann Postlethwait
Mark Eastwood
Barbara Gay
Jim Eaton
Carol Eaton
John Miller
Terry Robinson
Shereen Robinson
Brad Hurliman
Rob Dekarske
Shirley Mandler
T.O. Galloway
Bill White

I would also like to thank the following people for advice, technical assistance, encouragement, and moral support:

John Miller - Bull Run Castle
Ron Bigbee - Castle Avalon
Sir Randy Michael - Chateau LaRoche
Peter Wing - Wings Castle
Sue Maxwell - Ravenwood Castle
Mike Freeman - Castell Gwynn
Roger Greim - Kataryna Castle
Bruce Busboom - Busboom Castle
Meme Hardin - Hardin Castle
Wyatt C Mortensen - Sleeping Beauty Castle
David O'Connor - Castle Anam Cara

We would like to thank the following people who donated either money furnishings, or building materials to the Dupont Castle building project.

Bill & Mariann Postlethwait
Shirley Zimmerman & Bob Hampl
Mark Eastwood &Barbara Gay
Frank & Beverly Frederick
Bentley & PamWestfield
Al Dumit
Frank Bredimus - Berkeley castle
Mack & Mattie McLaughlin
Terry and Rick Moody - Sky High Castle
John & Pat Beno
Terry and Linda Jemison
Tientje Willis
Carl & Christine Hanfling
Charles Klusarits
Rick & Shirley Rutherford
Brian Hopkins
T.O. Galloway and Shirley Mandler
Bill White
Annamae and Ron Ankeny
Keith Nolan

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