More color selection at the Burgman Building: Window details

Well after lots of testing and changing and moving round I "think" we have the combo that will go on all the second floor windows.

We have retained all the same colors used on the storefront just moved them around slightly.

So Far I think its going to work.

Burgman Building: Project updates, Rear storefront work

Much of the wood ceiling was removed in front, fortunately this is the new residential entry area and will be redone in drywall with  Bradbury papers.

The rear storefront are has been crying for attention and the fact that we need the space for expansion of our antiques business has accelerated work on it.

All those drain line have to be redone as too

One of the problems is that this space was hurriedly done years ago and  we have to force ourselves to slow done and see its done right and years of "Billy Boy contractors" work is erased and replaced with proper restore.

One of those things has involved removal of several large HVAC collectors hung precariously on the ceiling. This one was dangerously close to the side storefront window and needed to be removed carefully so as not to destroy a 2000.00 plate glass window. We determined the safest way was to use a drywall lift and bungie it to it so be could carefully lower it. Took about two hours but its on the ground now and our window is safe! So glad we bought that lift, it has more than paid for itself.

Just a  little material for a new wall

So now we have to do  wood ceiling repairs in the rear part of the building and we have to create the new formal entry hall and downstairs reception parlor for the home upstairs. One of the first things we have to do is get the partition wall back in that divides the residential entry space from the commercial and unlike before (with an 8 ft. wall and dropped ceiling), this will be a full length (12ft) wall.

Now to just locate two sets of double entry doors, hire a brick mason to build a proper column on the side storefront/entry...little things like that.

More to come.

Burgman Building: Projects as opening day nears.

We are getting very close to our official opening day. One of the last hurdles, our state tax certificate finally arrived. Things are getting priced and polished and things move along.

One of the things I had to do was get our rear door open. It had been shut for who knows how many years. It was screwed, nailed and even silicone.

If you note the screened door and the way over the years they had to add a fitter because of the wear on the limestone step.

Meantime things are moving along upstairs with the hallway, its come along way from the lattice ceilings days. Today we had a local reporter interviewing abut our upcoming opening and work done to date on the building.

Burgman Building: Facade painting and dining room projects

We have been so busy working I noticed I haven done a post in 10 days so here goes.
We continue to work on the front façade, I have gone up about as far as I can with the step ladder so its time to bring out the scaffold. Overall we are pleased with colors . The capital painting is the obvious next step.

The Dining room has been a project we wanted to tackle, just off the Garland Parlor and the Persian parlor it is a good size for dining but suffers from two many doorways. We think that doors to the hallway and the Garland Room were added at some point, with the closets being gone for the new kitchen we eliminate one doorway but ultimately all the doors need to be gone.

The hallway was very dark as a result too, so we made a decision to open up the doorway to the hall to 6 feet and in its place will be fretwork and Portieres, the doors to the Garland room and new kitchen will also do and be similarly treated with Portieres.


The small door was a closet added at some point it will go away completely. The door to the right is to the new kitchen and will become an opening with portieres

Here we have started the process of opening up. This was a non load bearing wall.
 

New opening really adds light into the hall
 

We are adding salvaged wainscot and there will be a chair-rail and baseboard for a more finished look

We removed the transom window in the hall to add height to the doorway and replaced it with fretwork made from a salvaged piece someone gave us.


The fretwork adds elegance but keeps things open and visual

We restored this piece which had been in basement for decades. We like free things!

So we have been very busy! More to come!



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!

Burgman Building: Shop window display space work

One of the things we have been working on is the storefront window display space area. The shop windows are great and period with beadboard on the raised shop area panels which makes for great display space, however the walls in the display area are a bit plain. Currently the inside of the windows and the double doors are painted a not very attractive  yellow, doing a little paint research shows they were a medium green (the same as the frieze area in the store was painted originally) and our plan is to go back to that, at the same time we want to unify the wall space at a the display and differentiate it from the main walls. To do that we found a "tin style' material which is a glue up and will be painted to match the trim. This will give the store display windows a more unified look. This tin style material is made of polymers and comes in 2x4 sheets and once painted will look like we have tin wall back in the display area

We should be ready to install hanging rail as soon as we finish the wall panel paintwork and change the frieze area color at the top to the original shade of green that was there.

Overall making, progress and moving in more stuff everyday.

Burgman Building: Removal of short wall and other fun things

So now that the suspended ceiling is gone, the crappy grid and now the partition wall that was added for whatever reason at last the rear shop space is back to its original configuration and we can start over.

The wall frame was hardly secured and I'm often amazed at the work of "Billy Bob" contractors. Why would you not build a wall floor to ceiling and have each space with its own ceiling system? Oh well its gone, and none to soon.

Upstairs we have begun an adaptive reuse project. The upstairs room which will now be
our master bedroom suite had a kitchenette. The cabinetry was built to fit the space and  with all the open shelving will make a perfect closet. All we have to do is install some crown molding, closet rods, and some bins and baskets for storage.

We started cleaning it up so we can get the trim work done  and repaint it. This is important BECAUSE we now have accepted a full price offer on our Indy house, which means we will need to move in sooner than later! Of course we have to sweat home inspections and appraisals but if all goes well we need to be moved in here by around the 4th of July.

So lots of things to do in Logansport and Indy and we still have restorations on-going in Cincinnati.

Burgman Building: Weekend Update.

You can really see the volume of space with the dropped ceiling gone

Busy weekend working in the "saloon space" of the building. ALL the dropped ceiling is out, along with bags upon bags of insulation. At the same time we started wall removal in anticipation of  the new entry hall and reception room for the residence. This wall removal represents the location of the new pocket door and large transom that will be above it.

This should bring in a great deal of light at this point especially after the entrance doors are redone back to double doors. I cant wait to get the rest of this wall out so we can construct the new pocket door wall.

An early Four square and a mix of Victorian cottages from this view

I have to say I am really impressed with the neighborhood. while it's not "high end Victorian" (most of the homes were built between 1890 and 1910). I can not get over how immaculate and clean the neighborhood is with neatly mowed lawns and carefully trimmed bushes.

There is a row of late Victorian homes in this view.

Say what you will, but small town USA is a dramatic contrast to the more Urban neighborhoods I have restored in.

Note the green carriage barn, large two story Victorian, corner one story commercial, and in the distance another red brick  Italianate storefront building

Kids can safely wander the neighborhood, people ride their bikes, and most importantly the people are extremely friendly.

Burgman Building: Commercial "un-muddling" begins

The front storefront has few changes

While one could justifiably argue that the front commercial space is 'period perfect' down to its wainscot , period storefronts and beaded-board ceiling, the side street unit is not.

The back storefront is a 'different' story

In fact this was the area of greatest re-muddling, undertaken by the prior owners who were trying to... who knows what? What they did do is install the "Great wall of kitchen" as we call it, drop ceilings, install florescent lighting and put in crappy carpet.

There should be a law to prevent this!

These "periscope ceilings' do nothing to show off the large windows and period trim.

The new floor plan works better for our use

Of course it ALL has to go! We will be reconfiguring the back 2/3 of the space as additional shop space connected to the front shop and the front 1/3 will be turned into a formal entrance for the upstairs, with a large pocket door between this entrance and the commercial which can be opened up for large events where we might need to use multiple entrances.

Amazing detail on this capital

This back space was originally built as a saloon and it had been updated a few times over the year so little is known about its original paint colors. However when  we began removal of the dropped ceiling we exposed the original support column with its polychrome paint. Faded and chipped but enough to go by.

And there is the round window and 13 ft ceilings!

We also exposed the circular window along the back wall which makes a big difference! Still have lots of drop track to remove, and we now have a 7 ft high tall stack of acoustic ceiling tiles and we filled 30 bags with fiberglass bat insulation.



This short wall will come out and a full height wall built to house  a pocket door with a large arched window over it to let in light

Coming soon will be the old duct removal and patching any holes cut in the ceiling with some matching bed board.

Of course now that everything is out of the Persian Parlor, I just had to throw down an oriental rug which has some blues that compliment the wall nicely.

Burgman Building : Weekend Update: The Garland Parlor and fabulous finds!

A quick dose of "ugly removal" and the Garland Parlor its on its way back

The Garland Parlor is now back to its original size now that we have removed an addition done back when this was a drapery shop. the garland room is named such do the garland frieze stencil work. This room and eth long hallway both had evidence of a hanging rail and we presume this The Garland room might have been where the family hung Artwork. The removal  of the workspace involved removal of a built in box, workbench and some shelving and a partition wall.

I have no clue what they were thinking here, but this will be gone VERY SOON!

We cannot explain the "lattice work" hanging in either the Garland Parlor or the entrance hall, other than is tack and poorly installed, but that makes it easier to remove. Soon we will be back to original ceiling height in the  entrance hall.

Tucked away we found this treasure

Four days since close and so many changes and finds.! Tucked away was this Antique Zither, while it needs restringing , we are amazed anyone would just leave it.

Mapping it out is a must do when planning a kitchen

Today we mapped out the new kitchen. At 12x 19 feet its not the largest kitchen but will have room for side by side fridge, Large sink dishwasher and a commercial gas chefs range and plenty of storage due to the 12 foot ceilings. The island will be 42 x 72 and have bar seating and we sill have room for bistro table. The kitchen cabinets were put in about  a year ago and are of good quality with 42 " uppers. Our plan is to have them re-sprayed (they are currently a light oak) and we will reuse the green quarts counter top and be adding an extra 6 feet over what is already there. Fortunately we can get a perfect match for this counter top. The cabinets will be done in Antique Black and the island will be custom built as a free standing unit and in a different finish. Not sure if we will do a butcher block or some sort of copper top. We will use salvaged wainscot on the walls. With the additional trim work we will do we are going for a 'butlers pantry" look.

We knew this area was the most damaged

On Friday we met the director of the Cass County Historical Society who stopped by and we were interviewed by a report from the local paper who brought a photographer with here. Lots of questions and lots of photos and I guess the piece will come out in a few days. They photographed  the removal of the awful retail hanging board that was in the parlor revealing what I knew was the worst part of the Persian Parlor wall and this weekend I started removing the awful corner cabinet.

Fortunately this is where the new Valor gas fireplace , slate mantle and renaissance over mantle mirror will be

Fortunately this is the area where we will bump out slightly for the gas fireplace and the Slate mantle and Renaissance over mantle mirror will take up most of this heavier damaged area leaving me with only some repaint/re-creation work

Things are moving right along!

Polychomed light restoration.

I recently completed a fun project which I thought might be of interest to my readers since I know not all of you are mired in Victorian decor. We picked this piece up several years ago on a buying trip through the south

Now it might surprise you that I would buy Art Deco but actually when I first started collecting (back in the 1980’s) I started with art deco. The good stuff, not the 1950-60’s stuff passed off as Deco today. We chose to buy this price because it was good piece, nice design and the polychoming made it more unique that the average light fixture.

Normally, you find these in a basic bronze finish, so the polychome paint job made all the difference. These older fixtures often have issues like cracks. Those can be filled by use of ‘liquid weld’ which is a high temperature filler that you can sand if need be but it bonds well to metal and I find works well with these old fixtures. This particular fixture was ok in that regard but the paint was cracked and faded. A common mistake people make is using the wrong paint. You can’t use latexes. It won’t bond to the original paint and remember this is a light fixture, which means it’s exposed to heat. And the bulb face down, which means the heat rises. I use enamels for this kind of work. You can find them at hobby store. Even model car paints will work if you can find the right colors, or know how to mix them.

Now if you want to polychome a fixture that has not been painted you can prime it with the appropriate primer for the paint you are using. Actually red auto primer is a good base color if you are going with a gold finish. For this one colors were dictated by the original colors which I matched but if you are starting from scratch I recommend researching polychomed fixtures to see the appropriate color combinations used.