Not making that February 1st goal to reopen!

I'm an optimist.  I honestly thought it was possible to have Cow Palace moved and open for business by January 20th.  At the latest, February 1st.  Well, I missed that first deadline and there's no way we're going to make that February 1st date.  Most people would have realized the impossibility of meeting either of those dates.  Not me.  Like I said, I'm an optimist.

I'm not even going to project a guess for a more realistic opening.  I don't want to be wrong again.  The good news is that the building is undergoing a much more expansive restoration than I first anticipated. And the finished product is going to be well worth waiting on!  

Until we're ready to throw open the door to 211 Main for business, I'll continue to entertain you with photos of the restoration process and more of the history the building is revealing.

In this next picture, is a small glimpse of the crude hallway the previous owners created between the buildings.  One wall of the plywood structure has been removed, in order to allow the masons access to rebuild the crude doorway jackhammered into the wall.  There is approximately four feet between the two buildings and this structure is close to the cement block wall erected on the front sidewalk to keep people from walking between the buildings.  Melanie's hope is to knock out the cement block wall and open up the walkway so people can access Main Street from the back lot without having to walk to one end of the block or the other to gain entry.  

Obvious, too, in this picture is the multitude of vines that grow on the side of the building.  Although Melanie and I both enjoy the look of vines growing on the walls, we know that these vines are going to have to be removed.  The are invasive, thorny and are creating problems for both buildings as the vines find the smallest openings to slip inside, which means they've actually grown INTO the building in a several places.  

With this temporary structure and the cement blocks blocking the walkway, the only way to enter the walkway is from the back lot.  The walkway, too, was filled with piles of debris.  While attempting to clear a path for the stone masons to repair the crude doorway cut through the side of the building, we discovered the oddity pictured below--iron bars or grate, just about at ground level.

 We were perplexed because, although the building was once pier and beam, a concrete slab was poured at some point over the last hundred-plus years of the building's history.  To add to the mystery, there is a concrete landing at the opening of the walkway that drops to what appears to be at least one step down, plus we discovered several iron spikes/nails on the face of the wall that appeared to once support a handrail.  All of this made us wonder if there was once a staircase to a basement in the building.  It's always fun when other business owner's on Main Street become as curious as we are by our findings and jump into the fray to help resolve the mysteries.  Allen Lewis, chef and owner of Chunky Cow Cafe & Creamery, and Melanie are pictured below, digging away at rubble to examine the grate more closely.

 A long rod was pushed between the grate's iron posts and about four feet into the loose dirt behind it without hitting anything solid to block it.

No satisfactory explanations for the grate were discovered, so the mystery surrounding it will continue to haunt us until we find someone who can explain it's original purpose.

Next up...renovations continue.

Putting on the fancy...

Demo has in no way ended, but amongst the dust and rubble some things are looking fancy.  Take the front of the building, for example.  The first pic is a before.

And this is a 'during' photo.

Another 'during' but from a different angle.  Please take note of the beautiful moldings and corbels  at the top of the roofline.  They are beautiful.  A closer inspection and a light rap of the knuckles proved that they are made of tin.  They were painted a rusty red prior to the facelift the building's currently receiving, but are now black.  The brick facade in the pic below is painted with a white primer.

One other thing to notice is the awning is down.  It's coming back, but with fresh paint and a new look. Another thing to notice is the new color scheme.  Gray, black and white.  Left alone, I probably would never have made this selection. Melanie chose the colors and I have to agree that she chose well.  The building looks fabulous!   The brick facade is now painted gray, and the window trim, as well as the front door are painted white and black.

We hauled the tin awning panels to the ranch and worked about three days power-washing away about fifty years worth of dirt, bird doo and I lost count of how many layers of paint.  We wanted a fresh base for the new color scheme.  And, no, I won't reveal Melanie's choice until the day the awning is rehung!  

Lots and lots of work is going on inside and in the lot behind the building.  First up is this glorious tin ceiling that is now fully exposed.  

Not all the tiles match, but that's okay.  There are three different designs, but the one that is obviously the original has a floral design.  So, so pretty.

And look at that center medallion!  It is awesome.

I don't think I took a pic of the lot behind the building prior to beginning work on it.  This is a pic after a couple of days work.  

It was a mess.  We filled a dump trailer, a dumpster and at least three trash cans with rubble.  And there's still more to haul away.

Next up...more fancy and a few more interesting historical discoveries the building revealed to us.

Demolition continues...

In reviewing pictures for this post, I ran across a couple of Melanie swinging the hammer.  And I had to share.  To truly appreciate these pics, you need to know that she HATES ladders.  She'll climb up two, maybe three steps, then she starts hyperventilating!  I find this hilarious because she's the toughest, most independent woman I've ever known, yet LADDERS freak her out.  Sorry, Mel, but it's too funny not to share.

Please notice that she's on the second rung.   But I digress.  Back to demolition...

At the rear of the interior was a very tiny bathroom and an old closet built to house the central heat and air unit.  Both had to go.  The bathroom will remain but the square footage will be increased.  The closet is toast.  Phil Herring got in on the demo and he has brute strength!  This is him tearing out the central heat and air closet.

This is a pic of the bathroom.  So small that I couldn't even get a really good picture.  Like I said, it's toast.

My family teases me and calls me a hoarder.  I'd like to say they are all fabricators of the truth--in other words, they're liars.  But I truly am a hoarder.  My condition hasn't reached the level where you'll see me on a TV show buried in debris.  Not yet, anyway.  But my family will also tell you that if they need something, they come to me.  I usually have it.  The next pic is a perfect example.  I needed more than simply a sink in the restroom.  I often need to wash items that I purchase from estate sales, so I needed a kitchen-like sink.  I also wanted a vintage sink.  Something new just wouldn't do.  Not for the Cow Palace.  I found the perfect sink on Craigslist.  A quick trip to Austin with Melanie and it was ours.  Then we had to find something to set the sink in.  

Hoarder alert!  The buffet in the picture below is a family piece, the buffet I grew up with in my family's dining room.  My mother gave it to my younger sister years ago.  Last year my sister called me and said it was time to let it go.  A drawer had broken, one of the doors didn't close well, plus her husband had dropped the mirrored piece that attaches to the back and broken it.  If I didn't want it, she was going to pitch it.  My reply?  "Noooooooo!  Bring it to me!!"  It sat in my barn for a year, patiently waiting for that moment when it's services were needed again.  And they were!  The sink and the buffet were a perfect fit.  As if it was meant to be!

I love that a part of my mom will be in my shop.  She understood my hoarding.  I think she may even have applauded it.  In fact, I bet she's probably smiling down on 211 Main right about now.  

Demo Day!

After weeks of clearing out the previous owners possessions, the interior of 211 Main looked like this.

Remember me mentioning the crude door and hallway that was erected between the two buildings?  The picture above is a fairly good view of that doorway.  Notice, too, the copper tubing that runs the length of the wall.  The previous owners had a Glacier water machine on the sidewalk out front.  This copper pipe carried the water from the small restroom at the left rear corner of the room and through a hole chiseled in the front wall to the machine.  If you trace the pipe from the left of the photo to about 2/3 of the way to the back wall, you'll notice that the pipe bends up, over a ways, then down again.  When the previous owner's possessions were still in the building, there was a desk with a computer monitor on it sitting in that raised area.  In other words, they didn't move the desk to install the copper tubing.  They simply went 'around' it.  Melanie and I got a good laugh out of that bit of engineering.  

The day the dropped ceiling came down was definitely a day of celebration!

Yep.  Just as we'd hoped, we found a tin ceiling hiding above.  At one point the building had central heat and air--proven by the duct hanging down in the second picture above.  The ductwork remained, but the units themselves were long gone.  

We were beyond delighted to discover the tin was in fairly good condition, considering it's age.  Obvious repairs were made to the tin in the past, as some of the tins are of a different design.  But the entire ceiling is tin, with no squares missing, which is a bonus.  Lots of electrical ran between the tin ceiling and the dropped ceiling, which will have to be re-routed, an added expense to the restoration budget, but well worth it.

Now the next two photos require studying and comparing.  If you look closely in the first photo, you can see the 'lines' of where once were windows.  

We haven't been able to find an old picture of the interior of the building, but in the oldest photo we've found of the building's exterior you can see the placement of those windows.  The windows were probably covered over years later when the building that currently resides beside it was built, as the two buildings share a wall.

 On the opposite wall, the one that had the doorway chiseled out, we discovered shadowed impressions of two other smaller windows high up on the wall.  Melanie is a bit of an architectural sleuth and was determined to reveal the windows.  Hanging off a ladder and manned with a hammer,  she slugged away at the plaster and stone until she'd completely uncovered the wooden frame that surrounded the windows.  Lo and behold, within the exposed space, she also uncovered iron bars!  We can't prove anything, but we believe that since the building was once Florence State Bank, the teller counter would have been beneath these windows, as the tellers wouldn't have wanted a window directly behind them.  Bank robbers, you know.   The bricks you see behind the bars were used to fill in the hole on the exterior of the building when the windows were covered up.

As with everything in life, we discovered some oddities.  When Melanie was hammering away at the window on the right, she discovered wads of toilet paper stuffed amongst the rock and rubble.  What?!  Unused, thankfully, but definitely toilet paper.  It was unwound from the roll and wrapped sort of in a beehive shape and stuffed into the opening.  We pondered several different scenarios that would require placing wads of toilet paper in the opening, but none of them really made sense.  Sure makes for a good story, though!

The window on the far right revealed another hint of the building's history.  One of the iron bars was cut off and the remains of a rusty pipe were revealed in the opening.  Obviously, some type of wood stove was once placed beneath the window and the chimney pipe ran through the window and to the outside.  It must have been installed poorly, because the bricks in that window are covered with soot.  

Melanie is determined to uncover and retain as much of the building's history as possible, so don't think for a minute that these small glimpses of the past will disappear.  They won't.  She has come up with ways to keep them in view and give them a new purpose, as well.

Next up, demolitions continues!

Interior 211 Main

The following photos were taken during a viewing of the building prior to purchase.  Many moons ago I was a licensed Real Estate Broker in the State of Texas.  I have seen properties in every possible condition, from pristine-ready-to-move-in, to close to tear-down.  Fortunately, I was blessed with the ability to see beyond chaos, to recognize good bones hidden behind piles of possessions, poor decorating and even debris.  When walking into 211 Main, this is what the average person would see...

Photo taken from from rear of room toward front windows.

What do you see when you look at these three pictures?  Many would say 'stuff.'  Lots and lots of 'stuff.'  Here is what I saw...gorgeous old windows encased in original wood moulding and topped with a beautiful arch, and natural light flooding through the old windows.

Photo taken from front door toward back of main room.

 In this photo I saw space.  Much more space than the original Cow Palace occupied.  I saw plaster walls.  Old plaster walls.  Far left--and not obvious in this photo--there is a roughly chiseled-out door-size opening through the stone wall.  The previous owners had created the opening so they could move freely between the two buildings without having to go outside.  Since there's about a four-foot walkway between the buildings, they also constructed a crude covered hallway in the walkway to protect them from the elements when they passed to the other building.  This oddity was something we would have to repair, but it also offered an X-ray type opportunity to view how the building was constructed--and see that the exterior wall is approximately two feet thick!  Now that is some intense insulation!

Photo taken from halfway through main room, to reveal temporary walls built to form restricted area for pharmaceuticals, sliding glass windows, and a dropped ceiling.

In the third picture, I squinted my eyes and tried to envision the space without the temporary walls built to store the pharmaceuticals and without the sliding glass windows.  And then I looked up and wondered what the dropped ceiling concealed.  The building is over a hundred years old, which meant there was a strong possibility there was a tin ceiling hiding up there.

Some people would have walked---maybe even run from the building, unable to envision the possibilities, the diamonds hidden beneath years of neglect and concealed by 'stuff.'  Not me.  And, thankfully, not Melanie Jamison!

In a matter of days, Melanie presented a contract to purchase the property, the owners accepted, then the real work began.

Next up...demolition.

The heifers are moo-ving to a bigger pasture!

I am so excited to announce that Cow Palace Emporium is moo-ving to a bigger pasture!  Just a scant half-block down the street to 211 East Main.  Sadly, Cow Palace will be closed until all the renovations are complete and we've moved in all our merchandise.  But it's going to be SO worth it!

Melanie Jamison bought the building in December of 2016, and immediately set to work.  Lots of cleaning, painting and remodeling are going on.  She actually bought two buildings that sit side-by-side...209 and 211 Main.  At the present, she's focused on completing the remodeling of 211 Main, but will begin on the second building as soon as 211 is ready for occupancy.

While we're going through the remodeling process, I thought it would be fun to share with you the before and afters, plus a little bit of the building's history we've discovered.  Melanie shared a pic of the building's origin with me.

The first--and possibly most obvious--difference between this historic picture and more current ones, is the fact that the building sits alone on the street.  No building on either side.  The second thing to notice is the set of windows on the side of the building.  If you look closely, you can see that there is an arch above each of the windows.  That architechural feature will play in importance later in the before and after pictures.  

The next picture was shared on Facebook by James Wear.  He found it in a copy of Mrs. Caskey's book.  

The most notable difference between this picture and the one above is that it now has neighbors!  

To the right stands Brewster & Rutledge Real Estate.  On the left appears to be a grocery store.  Not sure of it's identity.  

Now let's jump to current time.  The pic below is the exterior view of the building at the time of purchase, December 2016.  Hidden from the street and afar by the tin awning that hangs above them, you'll discover two beautifully arched windows.  The beauty of the arches, combined with the fine wood moldings that surround the windows is exquisite.  And the front door!  It appears to be original and with the original hardware.  It, too, is a wonderful example of the building's history and the craftsmen of the day.

The next picture was taken in December 2016, as well.  Much the same, but shot from a different angle, which affords us a peek of the tin awning that hangs over the front of the building--and the sad string of Christmas lights dangling from the edge of the awnings.

Check back often for updates on the renovation of 211 Main and the history that the building is revealing to Melanie and me.  

Note:  Most of the current day pictures are provided by Melanie Jamison, as she is much better photographer than me!