A Work in Progress

My brother bought the building in the early 1990's, and it was pretty much a wreck then, in need of plenty of work and TLC. It's a large building and there's much that needs doing after years of neglect, and money is tight these days, so Progress has been a little slow. The first major project that needed doing after my brother bought the building was to install a new heating system and to convert some of the rooms on the first floor into a small apartment. Also, the original laid-up stone foundation was in need of repair, including new drainage.

I moved into the building in 1993, renting the newly outfitted apartment on the first floor. It's a small apartment but I have room for my art studio in the back. The first project I undertook soon after arriving was to finish sheet rocking and painting the walls and ceilings in my apartment and studio. I also insulated the crawl space underneath the studio.

A couple of summers after that we painted the building exterior and roof. The building was grey with white trim, which we liked, so we matched it using a Cape Cod style blue-grey, white trim, and chose a nice colonial blue for the doors, and red for the metal roof. We liked the red, white and blue color scheme. Next, it was time to remove the old rusty fire escape and replace the front porch which was beginning to fall down. My friend Steve helped me with this—actually, he did most of the work and I just helped him.

Since then there's been more work done on the interior, this time upstairs, as a new space on the second floor was renovated and brought up to code. Whenever possible, we try to save the original tin that covers the walls and ceilings throughout much of the building, but this large room on the second floor didn't have any tin, which made remodeling it much easier. The space currently houses a landscape architect's office.

The old building was grey with white trim.

 Lots of prep work needed to be done before painting.

Applying a primer coat to the bare wood.

Lots of priming.

Almost finished priming...

Applying the top coat, the roof is finished.

Before: old front porch and fire escape.

 After: new front porch and railings, before being painted.

Steve working on the new porch.

New paint. New porch. New era.

Tin covers many of the walls and ceilings throughout the building.

Newly renovated second story office.