The Past Week! What a Whirlwind!

Over the last week, we've had some exciting things happening at the building and with Sixtwelve!

We bought a Redbud tree for Sixtwelve on Earth Day!

I volunteered at the Festival of the Arts in downtown OKC!

I worked at the West Lawn Stage.  Go Joe Divine!

I'm on the board for the Oklahoma Alliance for Art Education and we had our annual State Superintendent's Awards for Excellence in Fine Arts at the Scottish Rite Temple in Guthrie, Oklahoma.

It's a beautiful building inside and out! Visit it sometime to see some of Oklahoma's great history!

I studied my rear end off too. It's almost finals time which means I'm writing a LOT! I'm currently working on papers relating to an awning for my Material Culture class and one on the palace and gardens at Versailles!

All that studying and hard work means I can take time for play! Gooooooooo Thunder!!!!!!

We all take Thunder basketball very seriously. :)

Russell, Robby and Preston are great people to go to a game with.

Just yesterday we walked over to the building to find all of the front side windows installed! Yipppeee!

And today we asked someone for the very first time to be a board member. Her name is Tracey Zeeck and she accepted!  We couldn't be happier because from the very beginning, she has been so supportive and asked if there was anything she could do.  She, her husband Andy and Andy's brother David focus on green building and renovations.  They are living exactly what we want to promote with our business, so it was a natural fit.  Tracey has her own PR consultancy, is a motivated, caring and genuine person AND wants to see great things happen for OKC, so we are so lucky to have her on (the) board.  The goodness just keeps coming!

Windows!

After lunch today at Paseo Grill, James and I went over to check out the building and I was so happy to see our friend Troy over there installing the first window! We have a fun "story" or webisode coming up on the topic of windows.  In Historic Preservation, everything seems to come down to windows so it's a really important piece of the puzzle.  We couldn't be happier with the guys from Wewoka Window Works who custom built all of our windows according to Historic Preservation guidelines.  And they are going to look great!

Can't wait to see what the building will look like when they're all installed! It's going to take a while, but it will be so worth the wait.

Here's what was happening today!

We Got In!

I'm so excited! James called me just a little bit ago to let me know that our sixtwelve site plan was  accepted into Evolve!!! I'm so proud of all of the work James has done!  Here's a copy of the invitation that's on Sustainable OKC's website.  I am going to be out of town for my dad's birthday and Easter, but if you're able to go, you should check it out.  It looks like it's going to be a great show with some amazing food!

Site Plan and "Evolve" at IAO

James has been hard at work on a site plan for our project over the last couple of weeks because we want to enter it (and did enter it) to be considered for an exhibit at IAO Gallery titled, "Evolve." Sustainable OKC and Individual Artists of Oklahoma have teamed up to present this great event. Here's how it's described on Sustainable OKC's website:


EVOLVE | April 23
Come see artistic visions of a sustainable, resilient, abundant community at EVOLVE, a juried art exhibition and local food challenge, featuring dishes from contestants (local restaurants, caterers and chefs).


We felt that our plans for the building and lot next door would fit right in with the objectives of the exhibit, so James created a great submission. I'm so proud of him and grateful for all of his hard work because this will also be a huge part of our presentation to potential supporters. We picked up a large copy of the plan today at FedEx Kinkos and had a little editing session. Here's a peak! Of course I have my post-it notes with suggestions for changes all over it so you'll have to go to the event on April 23rd at IAO to see the finished product if we are accepted. I'll be sure to write about it here if we are. I'll be keeping my fingers crossed!

1st Draft!

James is as pleased as I am with the site plan!

A Rare Treat! A Blog Post by James: Our New Roof!

Because this is my blog I'm usually the only one contributing a voice.  However, today we have a special treat.  I asked James to write something about the new roof we've gotten on the building, so here it is! 

"After scouring the globe for a realistic synthetic replacement for the original asbestos roof tiles, we found a pretty perfect match in the Da Vinci Fancy Shake with a Castle Grey Ecoblend color tone. The Fancy Shake is a very clean cut tile that doesn't suffer from the exaggerated contouring of most imitation tiles. As a result, it has the look and feel of the original asbestos. And that's great, because the original tiles were in pretty substantial disrepair (years of neglect and one too many hailstorms), leaving us in the unique position of having an original material no longer legal to install and no typical composite shingle that was anywhere close to mimicking it. This gave us both the challenge and opportunity to meet historic guidelines by finding a new material. The Historic Preservation board worked with us and allowed a synthetic material that enabled us to meet our energy efficiency goals. With the highest hail and fire ratings on the charts and a fifty year warranty, the tiles are built to last. In addition, the manufacturer is local (within 500 miles), which reduces the carbon footprint of delivery, and has a program where they accept the scrap material left over from installation for reuse and recycling. Both contribute to LEED certification and to the sustainability of the project, and by utilizing an Ecoblend color tone the tiles reflect heat as well and improve energy efficiency over the life of the building. We're very happy with the results, and thrilled to find another material that meets both historic and energy efficiency guidelines."

Here are a few images of the new roof! 

We Have a Facebook Page!

If you're on Facebook, check out our page and like us! (If you actually like us, that is. Haha!)

GREEN Historic Preservation! Yes!!!

I got the idea to take a picture of this little card from James. He said he was keeping it as a memento.  It's proof that our city is starting to make changes that we really want to see happen!  During the first year of the Paseo project, we were going to the Oklahoma City Historic Preservation commission's meetings to ask for permission to do certain things and use certain green materials on our building.  Sometimes the answer was no, but we felt lucky that sometimes the answer was yes! I'm so excited about the fact that we're moving in the right direction! You can bet that we will be at this meeting.  If you live in OKC and are interested in these issues, you can come too!