House Statistics Update October 2004 Update August 2005 Update October 2006

10/22/2006 8:47 PM/2005 accomplishments for Prairie House

Cold weather and no heat kept us home during the winter months.

Spring arrived, and we started by using Jail Trustees again after several months lapse.
James Mayberry & Jerry Eichler made a magnificent work crew, and have completely painted the entire house during these spring months since about May. All the holes in the walls have been repaired, and painted. We are currently finishing painting the trim throughout the house. The floors no longer have holes in them, though they are not yet redone.

About two weeks ago Dr. Chris Jeffries asked if we could use the old 1920 era kitchen cabinets out of the L. B. Simmons home at 401 North 9th. What a Godsend! They will be beautiful in the house. Jim Shelby is currently home building matching cabinets to go with those in the Prairie House kitchen. We also got our old sink and footed bathtub re- porcelained by Mr. Bob Whetzell. Mr. Charles Thomas has donated his time in repairing the dining room chairs, and stabilizing them for our use. Charlie Calger has helped in many ways, but the latest thing was in helping device a method, and the brackets necessary to mount our stairwell chandelier, and make it retractable so we can lower it in the stairwell for cleaning and bulb changing. It was a great day yesterday to turn on the lights throughout the house, and have the old original doorbell working again!

All the beautiful crown molding has been repaired and refinished, to look beautiful again as it did in 1918. The stained glass window in the living room looks very similar to the original window. We are grateful to Duncan’s own Mrs. Kay Hall (of Ligon’s nursery) for the window she made and gave us.

A beautiful old chandelier from Earl & Michelle Hunter now graces the dining room.
Other donated fixtures can be seen throughout the house.

We still have only one toilet and one sink with cold running water, but we are hopeful that funding will soon be in place for completing that. We estimate another $50,000.00 should put us to completion of the five phases for house and grounds renovation. We expect that to be done by the latter part of next summer, if not sooner.

We currently are raising funds to match a 2:1 matching grant from the Kerr Foundation, and were fortunate to get $10,000.00 through Jari Askins efforts, via ASCOG, from the Oklahoma Department of Commerce. That helped put in the heat and air, and completed the electricity for the house.

We thank all the folks who have donated money, time, labor, or materials to putting the old place back together…” I love it when a Plan comes together”!…neighbors helping neighbors.

Gail Loafman, August 9, 2005