New House

Shirley Jones couldn't hold back the tears Friday evening as she received the key to her new house at 53 Melbourne St. Dabbing at her eyes with tissue, she spoke with a quavering voice. "I'm so thankful! I love every one of you," she said to the group of volunteers gathered in her living room. "I feel like I've made such good friends, and I'll never forget any of you. " It was an emotional moment for the volunteers too, as they celebrated the completion of the house building that had taken almost a year.

A historic log house on North Third Street that was built about 1820 is being dismantled, and some of the materials will be used in a new house planned by Ed and Patricia Hays, who recently bought the property. The Hays couple looked at the Dunlap House for several years before deciding to purchase it. They had mixed emotions on whether to restore it or to take it down. They decided to raze the house because of its deteriorating condition and build a new one that will have a similar facade on the front.

PERRYVILLE - B.J. Robinson has never lived in a new house. "I don't know if I'll know how to act in a new house," he said. On Friday he stood almost in awe as more than a dozen men from his church and the community worked busily in his backyard nailing the floorboards to the foundation. A couple hundred feet behind them is a scraped over piece of earth. It's all that is left of his family's home that burned in April. Fire officials called the house a total loss. On April 17, a Sunday, B.J. and Carolyn Robinson were hurrying back from Harrodsburg for evening services at their church, Perryville Baptist, but they didn't make it. They were called to their house that had been burning for several hours before anyone saw it. Carolyn Robinson's daughter, Leslie Garner, said the fire was devastating.

LIBERTY ? A house construction project by the Casey County High School Industrial Arts Department was approved Monday. Garland Whitis, instructor, got a promise of $27,000 from the county Board of Education to build a three-bedroom house near the high school that can be moved to another location. He said the house will be finished within a year. He said the class has made $475 overall profit for the first three houses the class built, but the class is not in the business to make money, only to break even.

Harrodsburg - A Mercer County man held three burglary suspects Monday morning he allegedly caught attempting to take copper from a new house he is building in Salvisa, police said. John Markart, 32, of 422 Mooreland Ave., and John E. Scott, of 408 W. Broadway, and a juvenile, all of Harrodsburg, were charged with third-degree burglary and theft by unlawful taking, more than $300. Each was lodged in the Boyle County Detention Center. The juvenile male also apprehended at the scene was released to his parents, according to a report by Deputy Sheriff Steve Williams.

Editor's note: Allen Leach is a historian and genealogist who lives in northern Casey County. He has done extensive research on places and properties in the west end of Lincoln County. The information for this article was taken from his research. HUSTONVILLE - The Lindsey Powell House was one of Lincoln County's pioneer and architectural treasurers. The structure was built in 1799 at Carpenter's Station, which was a crossroads of the original northern and southern trails in the western part of the county prior to 1820.

PERRYVILLE - Some of the most important landscape at Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site will be restored to its 1862 appearance, as Perryville Battlefield staff and Boyle County Public Works will remove the former manager's house at 2410 Whites Road after the Boyle County Fire Department uses it for training. The project is a partnership between the Kentucky Department of Parks, Boyle County Judge-Executive Harold McKinney and Boyle County Fiscal Court, Public Works and Fire Department.

I should have known there was a lot to homeownership when it took more than an hour to sign all the paperwork. I thought buying a home meant signing and initialing all those papers, and paying the mortgage every month. Then my mom came to visit and flew into action. Apparently, there is much, much more to owning a house. For starters, all that stuff that has been living in an apartment on Lexington Avenue for four years has to find a way to its new home. I had been pretty lax about packing and organizing stuff because I wasn't going to be living in the house until after the wedding.

At a time when most people their age are moving into smaller houses, apartments or retirement villages, Tom and Cheryl Prewitt will be moving into their brand-new, 3,700-square-foot dream home late this fall. The way the house is being constructed and furnished also goes against the stereotype. The Prewitts are following the lead of a younger, environmentally-conscious generation by making sure their new house is not only spacious but also energy-efficient. You won't find grocery stores, pharmacies or hospitals anywhere near the Jim Clark Road site in Garrard County.

He proudly proclaims himself as Ohio's No. 1 UK fan and one of his favorite days of every year is the third Saturday in July when he's part of the UK Ohio Convention - a fan gathering that is all about University of Kentucky athletics. However, Jim Porter of Middletown, Ohio, is already counting down the days until Vinny Zollo can play basketball for the Wildcats. Porter was one of the first to get a call from Zollo, a 6-9 Ohio high school freshman, after he made his recent verbal commitment to play for Billy Gillispie.

A zone change to allow for a new 246-unit multi-family housing complex at East Brannon Road and Lauderdale Drive that developers say will be unique in Jessamine County received conditional approval Monday from the Nicholasville Planning Commission.  The zone change affects a little less than half of the 20 acres slotted for the estimated $23 million project, changing a little more than six acres from P-1 (professional district), and less than half an acre from R-1T (townhouse residential)

Asbury Theological Seminary dedicated new student housing on its Wilmore, Kentucky campus on Nov. 13, during its fall meeting of the Board of Trustees. The ceremony marks the completion of two single student residence halls, Bettie Morrison Hall and Sundo Kim Hall, and officially opens The Ira and Sally Gallaway Village. The two new residence halls are the first of four to populate Gallaway Village on East College Street in Wilmore. The state-of-the-art residence halls each feature 11 bedroom suites (bedrooms, dens, kitchen/dining areas and living rooms)

Boyle County Habitat for Humanity will hold a dedication ceremony Sunday., Sept. 23, 2012, for its newest house, at 402 N. Sixth St.  The organization's mission is to provide affordable, decent housing for families in Boyle County who otherwise could not afford or qualify for home ownership.  Since its founding in 1990, Boyle Habitat for Humanity has built homes for some 35 families in Danville, Junction City and Perryville. The organization's office and construction personnel are made up entirely of volunteers, most of whom are retirees from Boyle County.

I should have known there was a lot to homeownership when it took more than an hour to sign all the paperwork. I thought buying a home meant signing and initialing all those papers, and paying the mortgage every month. Then my mom came to visit and flew into action. Apparently, there is much, much more to owning a house. For starters, all that stuff that has been living in an apartment on Lexington Avenue for four years has to find a way to its new home. I had been pretty lax about packing and organizing stuff because I wasn't going to be living in the house until after the wedding.

Just five days before the deadline for candidates to file, the Kentucky House Republican floor leader has filed a lawsuit against the Democrats' redistricting plan, which became law last week. Jessamine County, which has outgrown the size of a legislative district since redistricting from the 2000 Census, split between the 39th and 45th districts when Gov. Steve Beshear signed House Bill 1 last Friday. A plan introduced by Rep. Ben Waide, R-Madisonville, on Wednesday would split Jessamine County into three separate districts.

LANCASTER - Travis Rose, 27, first glimpsed Garrard County's grand house on a hill in 1997. His grandmother, Shirley Miller, had spent years helping restore the dilapidated former home of Gov. William Owsley, and he traveled from Indiana to see it resurrected as a historic house museum. “It was really one of my first tastes of preservation,” he said. His childhood taste grew into an adult appetite, and Rose - now a scholar of historic preservation - returned to Lancaster as executive director of the house this month.

David Coontz made a promise to his wife when he married her 25 years ago. "I promised her then we would have our own home that our grandkids could come to," he said. "There for a while, I was wondering where that was going to come from. " Coontz and his wife Betty had been renters since they got married. They had enough to get by but not enough to get a house for themselves and their son, Josh. David Coontz, who works at Good Neighbor Pharmacy and pastors at the House of Prayer in Junction City, often had thought about looking into getting a house through Habitat for Humanity but assumed those houses were only for people without homes.

Shirley Jones couldn't hold back the tears Friday evening as she received the key to her new house at 53 Melbourne St. Dabbing at her eyes with tissue, she spoke with a quavering voice. "I'm so thankful! I love every one of you," she said to the group of volunteers gathered in her living room. "I feel like I've made such good friends, and I'll never forget any of you. " It was an emotional moment for the volunteers too, as they celebrated the completion of the house building that had taken almost a year.

At a time when most people their age are moving into smaller houses, apartments or retirement villages, Tom and Cheryl Prewitt will be moving into their brand-new, 3,700-square-foot dream home late this fall. The way the house is being constructed and furnished also goes against the stereotype. The Prewitts are following the lead of a younger, environmentally-conscious generation by making sure their new house is not only spacious but also energy-efficient. You won't find grocery stores, pharmacies or hospitals anywhere near the Jim Clark Road site in Garrard County.

PERRYVILLE - Some of the most important landscape at Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site will be restored to its 1862 appearance, as Perryville Battlefield staff and Boyle County Public Works will remove the former manager's house at 2410 Whites Road after the Boyle County Fire Department uses it for training. The project is a partnership between the Kentucky Department of Parks, Boyle County Judge-Executive Harold McKinney and Boyle County Fiscal Court, Public Works and Fire Department.