Before, During, & After: Phase 1

Now that we're done renovating the commercial and retail spaces and have signed leases, we'll start the process of renovating our home below our new tenants.  We'll be piecing together our home renovation with our own funding and plan for our home to be a work-in-progress when we move in.  Here are some pictures of the work we completed in phase one, before, during and after.

Front Door Before

Front Door During

Front Door After

Front Hallway Before

Front Hallway During

Front Hallway After

Office Space Before

Office Space Before

Office Space During

Office Space During

Office Space After

Retail Space Before

Retail Space During

Retail Space After

2nd double lucky tenant - Popshop Style!

It ends up that Popshop Style decided to take the back space office last minute, just before we were to sign with another prospective tenant.  We are pleased to offer the whole space to Popshop Style and look forward to having them as our neighbors when we move in to the space.

Now that both spaces are leased, we're looking ahead to start planning the phase 2 of the renovation - our home!

1st lucky tenant - Popshop Style

We are so pleased to welcome Popshop Style into the retail space starting winter 2013. 

Now that phase 1 of the renovation is essentially complete, we look forward to renting out the beautiful back office space to a lucky tenant, before embarking on phase 2, our apartment.

Pictures will be posted soon.

Close to Done with Phase One

The commercial floor is almost complete!

Electric, check
Plumbing, check
Drywall, check
Floors, check

The couple of items remaining include renovating the front doors and fixing some of the interior windows.

One upgrade that makes the building just shine is the front window.  It used to be framed in aluminum and divided into three panes.  The aluminum was curling up and disintegrating.



Rick wanted to replace the window with one pane and frame it with wood.  So we ordered the glass and removed the old window. 

We had to cover the window opening for safety because it took about 2 weeks to arrive.


The day the glass arrived felt somewhat ceremonial because of the fragile handling required.  It took 4 guys to set it in properly.

 

Once the glass was set, we framed the window with cedar wood.

Rick stained the frame around the window to match the stain that we'll be applying to the front doors.  The new window really makes the facade so much warmer and friendlier.

 

Radiators and floors

The contractor left us a nice surprise that we noticed this morning.  They removed the paint on the three radiators in the office space.  We weren't planning on having the paint removed till a future phase, because we assumed we would either need to have them sandblasted while in place or we would have had to remove them and get them dipped, like we did the doors.  

Pre-demo image showing radiator with old paint

 Radiator from previous image with paint removed

The old linoleum has been lifted off the floors, exposing the fir wood floors beneath.  The linoleum came off fairly easy in the back office and the hallway leading to it, without leaving mastic or residue.  In the front retail space, though, there's mastic stuff that we'll need to remove.

Front door paint removal

We think the two front doors are original to the building and we would like to find ways to strip the paint on the doors to expose the wood doors with some stain.

We have a black and white image of one of the doors from the 30's that shows it painted white with a window on the top panel.  Ideally, we'd like to put the glass back into both front doors to bring in more natural lighting and connect the exterior with the entry space.

Front doors look like this with paint

Rick started experimenting with a product to strip the paint off the frame.  He started with a test spot and after some trials, found a technique that removed most of the paint, requiring some sanding afterwards to cleanup the remaining spots.

After some sweat equity, paint was removed off of both door frames.  The do-it-yourself paint stripper may be too time intensive and laborious for both doors, so we're investigating possibilities for taking the doors for the paint to be removed using commercial paint stripper. 

Front door with paint removed from frame

Once the paint is removed from both doors and frames, we'd like to sand and stain the doors to show the natural wood next to the brick.

Front Lamps

The electrical inspection has passed and now we're looking ahead at the type of light fixtures for the front entrances.

Originally we were thinking of goosenecks lamps on top of each door, like in this rendition.

After some thought we decided to put one light on each side of each door because we liked the idea based on seeing examples from some of our neighbors, like the Village hall and a few restaurants in the area.  

We paid a visit to Klaff's, a home design store in town with an extensive lighting section, and chose lamps with yellow/orange glass to suspend on each side of the doors.  Rick printed the image of the lamp to the building scale to help us better imagine what they would like.

Printed image of lamp

Printed paper lamps on building for perspective

Roof Replacement

Rather than replace the entire roof, to save money Rick and the contractors marked off areas that needed to be selectively replaced.

The week the roof was being replaced, we had unusual torrents of rain and thunderstorms, so the project was done in fits and spurts.  With signs of a storm, the contractor would wrap up the roof and come back during the next dry spell.

Protection board being fastened on

In addition, the masonry parapet wall at the front of the building was in bad shape.  The contractor finished off the wall with stucco to protect it.

The contractor also added a nice cap to the parapet roofing edge.

The roof is now in good condition to protect the building from bad weather and the pesky squirrels that would occasionally visit.  

Demolition starts

On Friday, June 7th the contractors started demolition of the commercial floor. Here's a short video to commemorate the long-awaited first swing.

Over the weekend the contractors selectively removed walls and wall parts from the commercial floor at ground level.  They are very tidy - piling material by type before removing it from the building.

Organized piles of demo'd walls

The walls are selectively removed to create a large office in back connected to one of the bathrooms with a separation from the front retail space.

Office in back

Front retail space as seen from office

In some locations, we're leaving the existing, original wall trim...

Existing baseboard

Including the trim around the windows.

Plaster removed around windows

We asked the contractor to remove the plaster on the middle floor, since they were already mobilized on-site.  While doing that, they ran across underground conduits leading into the building.  We believe these were originally meant to carry telephone wires that would have run into the building if the original plan to make it a telephone switching building had occurred.

Conduits for telephone wires?

Back to Square One

We hit a wall in the loan process this January that derailed our plans for our off-beat dreamhouse.

After stringing us along for several months and providing a commitment letter for the 203(k) loan, the bank got cold feet and dropped us.  Not once, but twice.  First decline had to do with the lack of appraisers willing to appraise this "unique" mixed use building.  Right after they declined us, we got a call from the bank's appraiser, who apparently did not get the bank's message.  The appraiser said the property would be eligible for the 203(k) loan and appraised the building at a value greater than the loan.  At this point the bank gave us a verbal go-ahead to re-submit the paperwork under a new loan number.  The bank now had everything and we waited.  Then they came back and began to question if this building would meet HUD 203(k) guidelines.  We called HUD and the representative could not understand why the bank was saying that.  However, the representative said that HUD was seeing an alarming number of lenders declining loans on mixed use properties such as ours because they couldn't sell them on the secondary market.  We kept pushing Wells Fargo to give us a reason why they were beginning to have doubts with the loan, but they refused to be specific and eventually sent us a second declination letter saying that the building did not meet the bank's own private approval guidelines, which were different than those stated by HUD.

All in all, Wells Fargo sucks big time.

We're now approaching the renovation by starting at the commercial space on the ground floor.

Front Retail Space and Basic Rear Office Space

Four Alternate Options for Finishing Rear Office Space

 

This time we went with a credit union to fund construction.  We closed on the loan a couple weeks ago.  Looks like we may start construction sometime this spring.

We're already advertising the space for rent through a local broker.

We're now weighing our options for living.  We'll continue to update this blog with the renovation of the commercial space and what we end up deciding to do with the rest of the building.