Burgman Building Restoration; sales counter work and hidden pathways found

In a perfect world I would have loved to have a period store counter and I may yet find one, but to get us open I have had to be creative and use recycled material to come up with something. We are 'almost there" with some trim work left to do but it should serve us well.  Its sort of "Victorian updated" but most will come in and not notice it and in this case 'blending in' is a far better alternative to some wall slatted commercial pieces I seen in other shops . I used an old IMAC left in the garage as a visual about how much space our POS monitor would stick up. Still have to finish the "screening" of that area but I think its going to work. We will have a ton of storage space for wrapping paper and boxes under the counter and I'm working on building out shelving and storage.

Upstairs Greg has been busy stripping wallpaper from the "Grand hall" as we call it . 53 feet of hallway from the stairs to the Reception Parlor just before you get to the Persian Parlor...bye, bye,  1990's wallpaper border, this space will soon be transformed back to period elegance.

Days on a ladder painting have meant...what else? a break from ladders and we spend a day doing some yard work. I have resigned myself to it taking some time to fully restore the grounds on what we like to call the "Burgman block" since we own almost an entire city block of land. One of the pleasant discoveries was this stone path leading from the back yard to the back door. It was discovered when I found a stone covered by ivy and just started cutting away. This garden archeology is fascinating to me and we are just beginning to understand the thought Mr. Burgman put into his garden.We even found the old well pump base to the cistern

Although you can't tell, there is a two level pond under all that ivy! We have started cutting back the ivy off the gravel path that wound by the two level pond, but trust me it will take a lot of work and discovery to get things looking the way they looked back then.  But that will be future project! Some of our neighbor's who have lived there for decades have vague recollection's of sneaking back in "The Grotto" to play in the pond area. It was a favorite "hide and seek' playground for the kids in the neighborhood back in the day.

We also came across some paperwork. A printed listing of the house on Historic properties.com from 2005! at that time (pre 2008 real estate crash), the house was for sale for 94,000.00! In the listing it talks about how the site (3 lots) was used  as beer garden back in the old saloon days! Its a fascinating insight back.

So tomorrow? Work continues!