The Renovation Of A Building Into A House Would Be Interesting

Everything takes longer than you think - that's our motto and we work hard staying true to it.

Moving into the building in December we did not make much progress beyond getting settled.  There were numerous trips to Dallas and Oklahoma City to deliver and install all the drapes, redone furniture and bedding to my customers. Daily trips to the eight storage units to find all those things we thought we wouldn't need but did. By the end of the month we managed to have Christmas, get youngest son, Wally, married off and the shower in.

January of 2004 began the serious work of demolition of the upstairs.  There was no real plan for the building except that the bedroom and bathroom would be upstairs.  In thirty-five years of designing and moving, I have discovered that the building would tell us what needed to be where.  Too often I have designed places for customers before they moved in only to have them decide two or three years later the plan doesn't work.  All we started out with was that we wanted the floor plan to be as close to original as possible.  If you are going to do a "loft style" living space then forget about walls.  The drawing below shows the layout of the upstairs.  Goodbye to the tanning booths, the "stage" and the wall around the stairway.

First thing we did was to remove the lovely "astro turf" carpet that was glued to the floor with good old yellow contact cement. Much to our dismay under the carpet were various layers of old linoleum, tar paper and lots of glue.  We were not too happy as we wanted the original pine floors but that was just one of those minor setbacks. Looks like patience plus will be needed.

Demolition of the tanning booths and the stage created a huge pile of lumber and drywall.  The drywall was easy to get down stairs - we just opened the door at the bottom and let it slide down.  A neighbor with a dump truck parked it out front and whisked it away. I did not ask where he took it - just gone was all I cared about. Also discovered that anything we did not want if we just laid it out by the street it would disappear in thirty minutes.  No trips to the dump yard for us!

Once all the construction was demolished and the piles of stuff gone the fun started.  Marshell tried removing the contact cement and layers of who-knows-what with chemicals, a heat gun and sanding. None of these methods worked. Sandpaper gummed up and the heat gun and chemicals made a gooey mess that hardened again in three seconds.  Guess what worked?  A two inch wide putty knife and scraping.  Cool!  At least something took it off.  I have to admit that I was not good at this.  After all I had other work to do, had to cook, had to walk the dog etc. etc.  I have said before what a guy Marshell is.  Roughly fifteen hundred square feet of crawling on his little knees with his little scraper and the hundred year old floor appeared. Actually he kept from going crazy or giving up by working in the morning and then taking Gene, the dog, and I for a ride thru the back roads of Oklahoma.

So, floor cleared of mess and time to get the sander out.  An initial sand showed what boards needed to be replaced.  At some point in time the roof had leaked and there was quite a bit of damage.  Once again the skilled little Marshell replaced all the bad flooring so that no one can really tell what is new.

By Christmas the floor was looking great.

Every Christmas I do a picture card and if I am not crazy busy I sometimes can think up a rhyme.

This particular year we used the outside of the building for the picture and on the inside I wrote:

                        Christmas lights and decorations get done faster than historic restorations.

                        

                        More serious sanding, hammering and scraping

                                   should have occurred this year

                        But back road adventures, festivals and friends

                                    kept completion from being near.

If I remember right this was when we had visitors who wanted to see what we were doing to the building.  I remember people from the bank across the street coming in and saying it would look really nice when we got the walls up and some drapes. Ahh...we just took some walls down and now it looked huge and cool.  Cover up the awesome windows...ahhh...no. Remember how the cobblers children had no shoes.  Well, the designers house was to have no drapes.  As Marshell says - anyone who wants to watch an old man walk around in his underwear - have at it.

Funny story.  It was around this time that the woman who cleaned the bank very early every morning told some of the bank employees that the man in the building across the street stood in an upstairs window and stared at her every morning.  Gosh! She thought I was married to Matt Dillon!  I would have been flattered if Matt Dillon in real life stared at me every day - especially in the morning with no makeup and bed head.

Since I am telling stories.  The previous owners told us that there was a ghost in the building.  The ghost would turn lights on and off.  Guess they were warning us or trying to scare us.  As Marshell worked all those long tedious hours scraping the floor he started telling me that he thought someone was watching him. I smiled and said "yes, dear" figuring he was sniffing glue fumes from the floor.Then I began to notice when I got up early in the morning to work or play on the computer I would feel this chill sort of move up my arm - sort of like a breeze but there wasn't one. About this time our oldest son and his wife came to visit with their two labs.  They brought a blow-up bed and slept up stairs.  The next morning son, Wes, announced that we had a ghost.  Now you have to know Wes to know this was totally not something he would dream up. He said they had awaken in the middle of the night and the two labs were at the other end of the room and were playing with someone but of course, there was no one there.

I happened to know the gentleman who knew Everything that went on in Wynnewood since the 1920's.  When I asked him he told me that a doctor who had an office upstairs was in the habit of taking sleeping powders after lunch for a short nap.  One day he didn't wake up from his nap. So now our ghost had a name.  We don't "feel" him very often anymore.  Actually we think he did not like the previous owners but has decided we are okay.  Oh - maybe he likes to watch me walk around in my underwear.

Marshell and I had a few discussions about the "beach scene" painted on the stair way wall.  Actually it was scarier than the ghost.  I could paint it.....or.....the plaster could just be removed.  I will save the answer to that one for next week.  We are a year into this project and we still have re-wiring, baseboards, paint to strip off all the door frames and doors, plumbing to do and a bathroom to create and a back deck that wouldn't hold the weight of a cat to rebuild.  At least we are holding true to our motto of making everything take longer than it should.

Are you ready yet to take on a project like this?