Friday, June 25, 2010

Kevin's Birthday Present

Now I know that most people don't like receiving letters from the State, I know under most circumstances that I certainly don't (I don't know how many times they can mess up and fumble a tax return, but it seems to happen to me with regularity). However, this post is about a time when, finally, I don't mind seeing that state seal and official envelope.

First a bit of back story. If you are reading this then you know that we are restoring Walnut Manor and you know that it needs a lot of restoration. In an effort to aid in this endeavor we spent an exorbitant amount of time this winter working on a preservation grant proposal. Essentially any time that wasn't spent digging out of or shoring up damage from Snowmageddon parts I and II was spent writing, re-writing and re-re-writing this grant application. The grant that we applied for is for a matching grant meaning that we need to come up with at least 50% of the cash/work to be done on as part of the project. So quite a bit of time was spent figuring out how much we could spend what exactly our labor was worth to the state. Of course we couldn't have done it without the help from Stephen the genius restoration carpenter that we've come to know.
Anyway, I'm sure you get the gist. . .lots of work, lots of snow and then lots and lots of waiting.

We were hoping that we'd hear something back about the grant before the actual start of the grant period (all the work being done has to be done in a year starting July 1 ending June 30) so we'd have time to put the work out to bid and actually start on Day 1. But things being what they are with large organizations, we're ecstatic to have heard anything before July.

So long story short, we finally got word from the state (dated on Kevin's birthday) that they found our grant application compelling enough to issue us a grant. Not for all we asked for, not that we expected to get everything we asked for since we proposed a grant worth more than they could give to any single project, but they did find our project to be worth about 1/2 of what we proposed. All in all, better than we had anticipated and a great birthday present.

Now let the work begin.