Yesterday we bought an old Watling penny fortune teller scale for the women's room. Today we took it to a lock smith and had it opened and keys made. I have found a site that offers help to tune it up so that is our next step. The cold wave continues. Scott just came back from checking on the restaurant, everything seemed to be working for now. On Sunday a friend and neighbor was buried at Wood Cemetery, Jimmy Gibbs, our sympathy goes out to his wife and children. Scott and I always enjoyed driving by his house and having him wave his socks at us. He was friendly and fun loving, and Fountain Run will miss him. He had been in the nursing home for some time. Everyone stay warm and take care.

Hello, from all of us at Anns Old Mill Restaurant, in Fountain Run,KY. We're a small little town where we all care about each other. It's a great place to live, and to visit. My name is Ann, and my husband Scott helped me to realize my dream of having a restaurant, by purchasing an old Mill that was built originally in 1870. Time had taken it's toll before we purchased the building, and as much as we love history, we knew it had to come down. So...in spring 2007 we had the oldest part of building collapsed, and as we stood and looked at the giant heap of material that was the old 3 story building, Scott turned to me and said, "There is no way I can clean this up I'll have to have help." I just pulled some boards out knowing that we were going to save as much as we could. Then day by day during a blasting hot summer we showed up, me in the mornings and he after pulling a full day at work and from May to August, we had it all moved. We saved a lot and gave some to a great guy who builds really beautiful primitive furniture, and lives just down the road. If you get a chance to buy some of his work count yourself lucky. His name is Brent Steenbergen and he is genius with old wood, everything he creates is right there. After we had cleaned up the older larger section, there was still the newer part to collapse and clean up so with Gary Joe Veach's help down it also came, and we went back to cleaning, by October it was all cleaned up. I can't tell you how many people who stopped to tell us we were crazy, and we should just burn it. We kept on working and hauling load after load of material to our home, which by now looked like a mega Sanford and Son site.
Winter passed and Spring came, April saw us break ground and pour a foundation with the hard work and help of Jamey and Chris Veach, who worked like crazy on a muddy cold day, then a couple of weeks later Darrell Proffit and his crew Pat, and the two Hewitt brothers in two days we had a foundation. By the next week there was bitter cold wind and snow showers and Daine Harrison who is a great friend of ours and one of the worlds best carpenters, and bless his heart he had no help but me for the first few days. He told me what to do and I tried my heart out as well as his patience I'm sure. We had a sub floor. Then enter Scott who burned a few vacation days and Warren Lovell who is also the stable keeper for Barren River State Park during the summer, Jerry Kerr a friend and neighbor and Ronnie Wuetcher a life long friend of Scott's , later our friend and neighbor Gary McMannama. Together we got walls, then with the help of Shane Peters and Bruce Layne we set roof trusses. It was starting to be a building.
We got everything dryed in then wired by David Pitcock, his helpers Mike Muse and Charlie Ford. Then we started the real adventure, we started finishing we started hauling back all that saved lumber the interior walls are the old sheeting poplar boards,from 1870. The front porch boards are the old floor joists originally 24 feet long and 12 inches wide and anywhere from 2 to 3 inches thick, we sawed them in half to move them, they had been used at least 3 times before according to the nails in them, which we had to remove as much as possible. The siding on the front porch is the original 1870 red clapboard from the old mill. The tin on the porch ceiling came from the old roof which was under another roof. The dining room floor was the original floor from the first floor of the mill and the addition, which our son Adam laid after all the nails were pulled and of course there were about 20 different widths so everything had to be sorted and matched. Once the floor was laid, then we hand sanded all the edges to round them over to each other with a hand belt sander and gave each seam the old edge of the shoe test.