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.