The Renovation of A Building Into A Home Would Be Interesting

Facing a renovation takes perseverance, tenacity and determination.  This one certainly has!

By the first of the year, after Marshell's attempt to cut off his hand in September, he had pretty good use of it back.  After one of the first real blizzard's in Wynnewood's history we decided it was time to replace the space heaters with something that at least would get the temperature up to 60 degrees. The normal hardware store variety were not to appealing so we went up scale.  The attractive ventless gas stove would fit nicely in the old building.  The cats certainly liked it.




Marshell went back to work on the powder room.  Since it was to be located where the original one was plumbing was not an issue.  We purchased a new toilet but used the original 1912 sink. Just a little hint, all old kitchen and bath fixtures have the year of manufacture stamped on the bottom. Once the fixtures were in, he stained the wood and then used Danish oil for a finish.  The item he is attaching to the outside of the bathroom is one of those children's coat racks that were in elementary schools.

So now it was time to sand the floor.  If you noticed in a few of the pictures the difference in the color of the floor you are seeing is the old floor against the wood Marshell replaced.  Before the sanding he decided where to put the floor registers, cut the holes and got the new ones to fit.  Dust time again. The object covered by the sheet is our prized stove.

By this time I had been running the diner for three years, it was fun and business was booming.  Can't say I was making any money but that was nothing new.  Wally, my son and head chef, had been driving 90 miles round trip for almost two years.  He was offered a better job.  We had a great gal working for us that I could have never replaced.  When she announced that she was getting married in September and would quit I told her to pick the date and I would quit also. I loved the diner but I really missed being at home and figured that maybe the progress on the building would go a little faster if I was there full time to help.

The diner got a new owner and I moved some kitchen stuff into the back room of the garage. One morning I was in the makeshift kitchen and Marshell was attempting to get something heavy out of the attic. I heard a strange noise and looked out to see that Marshell had slipped on the ladder and was unconscious on the floor in a pool of blood. He only fell from the third step from the bottom but evidently hit head first.

A call to 911 brought our police chief in minutes, then six emergency response people.  Marshell came to about this time. He could not understand anything anyone said to him and could only use words I cannot repeat.  It took all seven guys to get him onto the stretcher and into the ambulance, then off to the nearest ER.  Things did not improve there so they took him to an outstanding hospital in Oklahoma City.  A series of missteps by the hospital and a neurosurgeon compounded the problems.  He did not need surgery but they totally blew the diagnosis.  A comment made by an internist to my son started the removal of the neurosurgeon and the snippy nurse and saved his life. Four days in ICU and six days at rehab and he got to come home. The first thing he did when he got home was to get on a ladder to wind our antique clock..What a guy!

He had difficulty in doing things for about six months.  In truth it took a couple of years to get over what was a traumatic brain injury.  The police chief and the emergency crew were surprised to even see him again.  Also took six months to have 200 pages of the hospital records changed.

The fall happened in October.  I spent the winter finishing the walls with texture and paint.
In March it was time to finish the kitchen.  The plan as to how to build it sort of came to us as we worked.  The original goal was to have the same feeling you would if you walked into the bank.  So the kitchen counter was placed close to where the original bank teller counter was.  We purchased thirteen feet of unfinished cabinets.  Marshell anchored them to the floor and then covered the backside and the ends with bead board.

The counter top is wooden.  In my decorating days I got very tired of whatever the current style of counter top was "in".  To us a turn of the century counter could only be made of wood.  The sink is a 1920's sink with a backslash and drain board we had found several years before. Wow! A kitchen was finally staring to come together.

We had lived without heat and air downstairs for several years and now was the time to fix that.  By a stroke of luck a friend who owned a lot of rental property happened to have a used self-contained heat and air unit he said worked but he did not need.  It was logical to pay $400.00 for it and take a chance.  

With the technical advice from the guy who had been doing all of our previous work, Marshell ran the duct work under the floor. To get the huge heavy unit in place behind the building we rounded up a couple of high school football players to move it. High school football players are young and strong.  They also like to have a few extra bucks so when in need - seek them out.  The unit has worked beautifully for four years now making it a pretty good purchase.

Once the counter was done and we had air conditioning,  it was time for me to oil the floor. That was fun.  I did it in stripes about three feet wide so that if we had to come into the downstairs you could keep from walking on the wet oil.  It was hand applied and then hand rubbed.  I am pretty good at crawling on the floor, but that sort of got to me after awhile.

Floor dried in a week or so and Marshell started on the final step to finishing - the baseboards. He had lots of practice upstairs and it really went pretty quickly.

So, we started on the downstairs in March of 2008 and finished in October of 2011.  Sounds like a long time for the amount of work that actually had to be done but you have to  

remember there was the diner and of course, two accidents to take up quite a bit of time.    

Next week you get to see the finish product and the cost breakdown for the whole building.

Hope you can't wait to see the FINALLY finished pictures!

The Renovation of a Building Into A Home Would Be InterestingJ

Just when progress starts looking good, Murphy's Law pops back up.

After almost a year of community events and the new diner it was finally time to get serious progress done on the building. From past experience in the renovation of the gas station the ceiling had to be done first.

One of the things that we loved from the first time we saw the building was the original tin ceiling and the fact that the ceiling height was nineteen feet. There were a few places where water had caused some damage.  All the damage was in the seams which Marshell found fairly easy to repair. It made sense not to demolish the "hut" as it was easy  to use a short ladder on top of it for part of the ceiling paint.  Once that part was done we managed to borrow some scaffolding to complete the rest.

With the ceiling painted it was now time to demolish the "hut".  We were really very glad to see it go. Goodbye makeshift kitchen so it was a good thing I had the diner.  We ate a lot better food than we had in three and a half years.  Along with the makeshift kitchen the powder room with the cardboard shower went as did the heat and air unit that was probably old enough to draw social security.

It did not take us but about ten minutes to decide that the plaster really should come off the brick walls. Well, almost all off.  When the roof leaked somewhere back in time an unhandy

handy man must have decided it could be repaired with portland cement.  The plaster came down fairly easily, the cement patches not at all.  It didn't look too bad - sort of the "Adams Family" look.  Actually everyone thinks we did it that way on purpose.

Now that the room was down to the bare bones, it was time to repair the floor.  The bathroom floor must had a lot of problems through the years and Marshell replaced all of that.  The long wall with the two windows and the side door had taken the brunt of the roof leakes and the wood was replaced the entire length of the wall in a strip about eighteen inches wide.

The last repair to the floor was in the front of the building where the original safe sat.  The safe sat on a square of brick that wen all the way down to the basement floor.  The wood on top of the brick was about a half inch higher that then rest of the floor.  Marshell worked his magic and made the floor all smooth.

The long table in the middle of the floor was our makeshift cupboard for the coffee pot and everything else that needed to be piled somewhere.  Our unusual harvest gold refrigerator sat on two piano dollies for several years and just moved around the room. We got through the winter of 2008 by only using little space heaters, wearing lots of clothes and working hard to stay warm.

The walls were my job.  Where there was still very uneven plaster, actually cement, I used bucket after bucket of dry wall compound to first smooth the walls out.  Once the walls were smooth and dry I went back and added a texture.  Between working around Marshell and the diner, I think it took me a year to get them ready to paint.

Walls done, floor repaired, time to build the bathroom.  We did not have to make a decision as to where to put the bathroom.  Make life easy and put it where it was, the plumbing was and be done. Since we had plenty of space it could be much larger than the original one. There was also no reason to put a ceiling on it since the tin ceiling was so beautiful.

Marshell decided to build it out of the shiplap and beadboard much like he had done the wall of the stair way. He got started on it and one afternoon after the lunch rush at the diner he came in looking a little pale with a towel wrapped around his right hand. When asked what happened he said he cut his hand and was going two blocks down the street to the local doctor's office.  Ahhh.......one look at his hand with bone and tendons exposed and the emergency room ten miles away sounded like a better idea.

The doctor on duty cleaned it up and gave him something for the pain.  Then Marshell was wisked off by ambulance to Norman for emergency hand surgery.He had cut his hand on the power saw from in between his thumb and first finger then it curved down to the center of his palm. It was deep enough to go all the way to the bone and cut all the nerves and tendons. There happened to be an awesome surgeon in Norman and he had surgery at 5:30 that afternoon.  

With all the damage to the nerves and tendons that were too chewed up to reconnect he gave Marshell a good prognosis.  Two days in the hospital and months of physical therapy did wonders. The accident happened in September and by Christmas he was actually able to put a very small nut on a bolt to put up decorations.  Also able to go back to work.

While Marshell was in the hospital our best friend, our dog Gene,  had to be put to sleep.  She was a big part of our lives for eight years, actually since the day she was born.  I don't think either of us ever cried so much and really decided we never wanted to go through that again.   Famous last words!  Two days before Christmas a little golden cocker spaniel wandered up to the back of the diner. He wagged his tail and all but smiled at us.  There was a blizzard predicted for the next afternoon so we scooped him up and took him home to find his owner.  Yeah, right. Lucky had found a home.

We lived through the Christmas Blizzard of 2009 in Wynnewood. After the holidays it was not only back to work on the building but also a shopping trip to see if we could find a heater to warm the place up.

The Renovation Of A Building Into A Home Should Be Interesting

The upstairs is finally done and the downstairs should go pretty fast.  Famous last words!

Since we finally had a REAL bed to sleep in, life was good. The killer futon went out to the curb and some unlucky soul picked it up within fifteen minutes.  It felt very good to have a nice bed and no construction dust for a change.  Maybe it felt too good.

The drawing below shows the layout of the downstairs.  The plan was to tear out everything and get down to the original walls. Somehow we wanted the same look or feel that the old bank had but still design it to fit our needs. The most important thing to get rid of was "The Hut". Somehow it did not go with our idea of what the space should look like.  Funny thing was that a lot of visitors could not believe we were going to tear it out.

The Renovation Of A Building Into A Homa Should Be Interesting

Looking back at the pictures it is hard to believe that we did all this work - but we are only half done.

Thought it might be fun to look back at the pictures of not only what we started with but also the people who had the building before us faced. Proof that you can bring a building back. We know they put in the new windows and a new roof.  They also installed a heat and air system by expanding one of the bathrooms but the unit seemed to be an assortment of different brands and parts - sort of patched together. They never did anything to the back hall and it was in bad condition.

Their renovation was to turn the main room into three tanning rooms. They were built in the middle of the floor due to the windows.  The two exterior walls with the windows did get sheet rock as well as the ceiling. The sheet  rock was the only part of the renovation that we did not tear out.

I took black and white pictures of the upstairs before we moved in. I always wish in the end that I had taken more, maybe ones in color but they are rather stunning.

After three and a half years we got to move in upstairs.  Don't know if it will be noticeable but we have realized that the television and the bed are the only new things we have.  One would think that a designer who spent thirty-five years doing houses in Nichols Hills, Quail Springs, Edmond, etc. in Oklahoma City and Highland Park, Frisco and Prestonwood in Dallas would be a little more like Architectural Digest. Nope. What Marshell and I discovered is that it feels really good to be surrounded by things you love, that have special meaning and things you have done yourself. So we are stuck with old furniture I have recovered or refinished and really neat things that friends thought would look cool in our place.  Doesn't everyone need a black and white TV that works? or a Bernina treadle sewing machine with the instructions in Swiss? or a race car injector system?

Quite a change from the way it started out. But we were only half done at this point. The downstairs was next on the list.  What was it really going to be like to have a "real" kitchen?
Tune in next week for that project.  What seemed to be a really simple project after all we had done upstairs had a few surprises for us.

The Renovation Of A Building Into A Home Should Be Interesting

Do one thing at a time, as well as you possibly can, and enjoy doing it right.

Upstairs was looking pretty good.  It was at the point where it looked easy to complete. In all renovation or construction it seems like more things suddenly pop up that still have to be done. Plumbing the bathroom looked like the last big project until we realized that the astroturf still needed to be removed from the stairs. Once we moved upstairs we wanted all the mess gone.

Marshell removed the carpet and then removed the boards of the steps four at a time. He ran them through a planer to smooth them out. In the meantime we had a 1 x 8 laid across the opening to enable us to go up and down the stairs.  That was interesting and with thirty steps - it took awhile.

When Marshell got to the last few steps at the top we found that the top of the vault underneath had a few feet of original construction material, bricks and dirt laying on top of it. That had been laying up there for a hundred and six years and it was not going to stay. So, Marshell shoveled out all the dirt and materials and we transported them to a creek bed that needed some fill. I must say this was not a pleasant job and one that had a consequence.
                        

About a week after we finished removing all the debris, Marshell had a part of his anatomy become very red and swollen. It was a little frightening and a trip to the local emergency room didn't provide an answer.  So, off to our Doctor in Irving, Texas.  When the Doctor stopped laughing (we are his comedy routine) he explained to Marshell that old dirt in secluded places can produce a bacteria that affects certain parts of the body. A few days on antibiotics and everything was back to normal. Poor Marshell but lucky me since I don't have the same anatomy.

Now it was time to deal with the plumbing - can't put it off any longer. The original little - very little - powder room was at the south end of the back hall.  The room we picked out for the new bathroom was thirty feet to the north.  Our options to run the plumbing were (1) pull up the floor and drill thru the 2 x 16 inch beams (2) to go down through the floor to the ceiling below and run the plumbing along the wall to the original drain.  Neither was appealing but in the end going through the floor was the logical method. If, in the worse case scenario, the pipes leaked they could be repaired before too much damage was done.

When the Mason's had the building from 1969 to 1996 they removed all the windows and filled the spaces with halite blocks.  I have only seen one picture of how it looked at the local tax office.  By the time I decided I wanted a copy of the picture the tax office had gone digital and discarded with all the old paperwork. 
When the plaster was removed we found that we now had a beautiful brick wall with a halite block filled window. Bummer!


After pondering on what to do with the ugly wall we finally came up with creating a frame the size of the old original window. My first attempt at being artistic resulted in an outdoor scene.  Marshell then instaled an old window on the top and one on the bottom.  The center one had mirror panes where the glass originally was.  Great 
way to hide the halite block and have a mirror at the same time.

We managed to find a claw foot tub for the sum of $50.00 and with a little scrubbing and paint it looks great.  The pedestal sink came from one of my clients that had replaced it with a new one.  The toilet is old and is now against the law to buy or sell.  The tank and the bowl are two separate pieces and was in pristine condition. We purchased it years before at a architectural salvage store for $135.00 just "because". The hot water heated was installed on the other end of the building in the room with the HVAC unit. The old little bathroom became a laundry room with a stack unit.

Now we had a bathroom! Move in time! No,not yet. If we were going to move upstairs everything needed to be done.  The back porch and the stairs were not in very good condition. We never used them or spent time on the porch because it was forty feet up from the ground and scary. Once again Marshell pulled his tricks out of his hat.  I remember looking out the door when there was no porch at all. Must say that I stayed away and listened for the crash.  Somehow he replaced all the boards, added a rail and lattice plus tightened up the stairs and added a new roof on it.  What a guy!

One last thing before we could move in and sleep in a real bed.  The floor had been repaired and sanded but needed a finish on it. We chose to use Danish Oil on the woodwork, liked it and used it on the floor. There were other choices but polyurethane will yellow in direct sun light and is very difficult to repair if it is scratched or worn from moving furniture. Wax would protect it and give a nice dull shine but is high maintenance. Danish Oil brings out the natural beauty of the wood and gave us the look of being an old floor.It is also just a spot repair in case of a scratch or natural wear.


Done! Done! It took us three and a half years to complete all the work upstairs.  As much as we wanted or could have finished it faster we did not get in a hurry. Everything was also done to as near perfect as we could get it.  Except for the help with the banister and the HVAC system, Marshell and I did all the work ourselves.  It was also done as we could afford it with the majority of the supplies and tools purchased from the local hardware store.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the before, during and since we have moved in. I do have some of what it looked like when the previous owners purchased it. These certainly show that any building can be brought back to life. My rough estimate of what it cost to do the upstairs is pretty close to $15,000.00 which includes the new HVAC system we had installed in 2009.